Surround Sound

I am sick, and I am tired, but I also have the day off from school so I can rest up...or can I. I cannot sleep late ever and let me tell you why. So when three things happen you call it a trifecta, like in horse racing. Well my apartment is officially the Quadfecta of Auditory Hell. I am a light sleeper which makes it worse, but if the government is looking for new sleep deprivation tactics, I think I might recommend apartment 402 at the wonderful Forest Plaza Inn Resort. I'm just going to break it down by direction. So assume I am lying face up on my bed at this point...

To the Left: To the left is really the most mild of my annoyances.I have a noisy fridge, one that clicks and hums, and occasionally sounds like it is about to explode. The good news is my fridge only broke once this year. I have to walk through my kitchen to get anywhere else in my apartment which apparently is the hallmark of a building built circa 1925. I made that up, but in case I feel like making a grilled cheese on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night I am incredibly well situated.

Towards my Feet: So this is where I have my window. My view to the world. It's actually a pretty decent view and in the Winter I can see a lot. I can also see the back door of the undergrad housing complex next door and around 11am on pretty much any day of the week I can see girls leave wearing their skanky outfits from the night before. Awwww. Daddy would be proud. But with the good comes the bad, or should I say, the "bayg". When there's a party on one of the top floors, and there are only 5 floors, and it's in an apartment facing mine I can hear literally every single word. I don't mean to sound like Old Man River, bitching about the youth of America, but sometimes at 4am you don't need to hear dudes yelling, "Dude, rip another shot. Go! Go! Go! Ahhhh Collllleeeege!" I'm actually kind of jealous they are all having so much fun. But those girls. Will they not shut up? Jesus. This is a typical conversation I hear.

Girl 1: Bayg Bayg. Bayg bayg bayg.
Girl 2: No way!
Girl 1: Bayg.
Girl 2: That's amaaaaaazing. She is such a bitch.

But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the burned out Fraternity house that is being worked on. Here's the link. So the workers start at about oh 6am every morning, and they are working on the top floors and apparently they are gutting the place. So this means of course they are clearing debris and putting it in the garbage. And when I say clearing debris I mean dropping huge pieces of metal from the roof into one of those huge industrial metal garbage containers ...all morning...every morning...rain or shine. This of course is awesome because I have an unobstructed view to this house and can see when stuff is about to be dumped off the roof. Of course, you know, I'd rather be sleeping, but a show is a show right?

Behind my Head: There are four floors in my building and my head is directly, directly, directly next to the elevator shaft. And we are talking about an elevator shaft that is over 80 years old. I am not exaggerating. It's the kind with the two doors you have to pull back to get in. You have to pull back the two metal doors that slam every time they close. Any time anyone gets in and operates the elevator, on any floor, I hear it. I'm just going to repeat that last sentence. Any time comma anyone gets in and operates the elevator comma on any floor comma I hear it. The sound is not is not a gentle buzz, or a little click. It's like this.

Elevator: Knock knock.
Me: Who's there?
Elevator: It's the Industrial Revolution, motherfucker, and your ass is mine.

I don't know exactly what the Industrial Revolution would sound like, but that's what it sounds like every time the elevator is used. I hear it, and I feel the rumbling in my bones, from 5am when people wake up to run or whatever, to 3am, when the Chinese cats across the hall come home and smoke Pall Malls and watch Friends. It's been a year and a half and I still can't get used to it. True story, I used to go to the second floor, and then leave the elevator door slightly ajar so it wouldn't move if someone presses the button (there's some mechanism that requires full-closure of the elevator, thankfully). But if you are on the second floor you take the stairs, so the hope was that people would come in, press the button and the elevator would stay on Two forever so they'd give up and walk up all the way, and thus nobody would use the elevator. Sometimes it works. I'm an ass.

To my Right (aka through my wall): Have you ever watched Discovery Channel? I hope you have. Have you ever seen a lion catch a gazelle and bring it down? Do you remember what it sounds like? The guttural snarls and the high pitched whimpering. No? Well maybe you should meet my neighbor then. I think his name is Steve and I think he weighs 400 lbs, and I think about buying him breathe-right strips all the time to open up his passages. Sometimes I think he is choking, sometimes I think he is harboring African rhinos, sometimes it sounds like he is nursing raccoons, and there are other times I think he is chopping wood.

For starters it's like we are living in Memoirs of a Geisha times. The walls might as well be made of paper. And if they were I would reach through those walls and slap the man silly.

Steve, I can hear AND see you eating a gazelle in bed. Didn't we already discuss this?

Basically, this is my life.

I've smacked that wall so many times trying to get this guy to shut up, and maybe he will stop for a minute but then it's back to operating that chainsaw. But let's say that ol' Steve has had a quiet night, and that Mr. FingerTheBlog is sleeping like a little bebe, well at 6:08am Steve's alarm goes off. That damn alarm might as well be next to my face because I hear it like a whisper in my ear. Sometimes I'll wake up with Steve at 6:08 and slap the wall like it's a snooze button. 6:08am, like clockwork. And if I am so lucky as to fall back asleep right away, well you think 400lb Steve is taking the stairs when he leaves his apartment at 6:30am. Oh helllll no.

So there you have it. A cacophony of sound that is free with the rent I pay. I have four months left of this. If you don't think I'm buying Steve Breathe-Right strips and sliding them under his door before I leave Ann Arbor you are sorely mistaken.

That Smell in the Air...That is Business

Recruiting for MBA1s starts up next week and if you want to reminisce like I do you can go back and read some of my old posts. I'm still slightly involved with the process, giving my time to first years for mock interviews (you can call me Saint FingerTheBlog or San DedoElBlogo for those of you bilingually inclined). It's kind of funny because I try to be tough in these mock interviews because the better prepared these folks are the easier it is going to be for the real thing. I put on this pseudo-scowl, and sometimes I cut people off if they're taking too long to answer something...all tactics that were done to me when I was on the other side of the table. My favorite part of the mock interviews is when I rattle off a bunch of technical questions and then some scenario questions (tell me about a time when....) and then I kind of pause, pretend to write something down, scowl, and then say, without even looking up, "what do you do for fun?". And every time it catches the interviewee off guard. It's the easiest question in the world, but people are always thrown off. I was giving a mock yesterday and I asked "what do you do for fun?" and dude's all, "ummmm, I like reading", so I ask what's the last book he read and he starts saying something and cuts himself off, and then says "Winning by Jack Welch". Liar liar, pantalones en fuego. I don't know, but that question allows you to say just about anything in the world about anything at all, but if your answer to "what do you do for fun" is that you read Jack Welch, which is cool and all, it just sounds supremely lame. You can say you fly kites, rassle gators, or eat jalapenos. Reading Jack Welch...yawn...let me hit that snooze button for the rest of the interview.

Gator Bait!

Last week I interviewed a chinese girl who I've met with a few times to help out. So I gave her a mock and we're talking after the mock and I'm about to say goodbye and leave and she's like "One more thing, is my english good enough?" So I say, "yes, you should be fine", which I truly believe, but then she pressed a little bit and it's like she wanted me to measure how good she was. I'm not sure what she wanted to hear but I was tempted to say, "yeah, you're a little better than Yao Ming, but not quite as good as Jackie Chan".

Yo. Yao? Yo. Yao.

I just told her, like I tell everyone "you should be fine".

Let me tell you what is also fine, the new $100 million business school, which finally opened it's doors. It's pretty unbelievable, and I don't want to complain so as to sound spoiled but I have one minor beef...

Minor beef

...and I don't want you to think that I am opposed to LEED Certification because I love me some LEED Certification but the urinals are soooo green, (how green are they?), the urinals are so green that they are WATER FREE. Remember back in the day when you were at the water fountain on the playground and some kid was taking forever and someone would yell out, "hey save some for the fish" and then everyone would laugh and then throw dodgeballs at the fat kid? I do. Well let me tell you, the Ross School of Business is saving some for the fish, in fact, they are saving a ton of water for the fish. The only issue is that the bathroom smells like a "squatty-potty" by about 1pm every day.

Squatty Potty

Instead of Water Free can we have an "Almost Water Free But Just Enough Water Not to Stank But Also Just Enough to Help the Environment" urinal? Can we do that instead. Like I say when people complain about the new school, "next time you want something different you spend your own $100 million". I got $23 in my wallet, so that's a start.

I Got a Feeling 2009 is Going to be Kind of Awesome

Hello 2009. Classes start tomorrow and I think I'm ready to get going on this new semester. I've got Susan Sarandon narrating Discovery Channel's Planet Earth for me this evening, while I chow down on a burrito and blog...and such is the life of a business school student. Winter Break, I believe, is reason enough to go back to graduate school. I spent break down in Florida with family, eating right, relaxing, and soaking the Vitamin D from the sun. Almost 3 weeks later I'm ready to rock in 2009. These poor seals stand no chance against this Great White shark by the way. It's like me trying to outrun a killer school bus with razor-sharp teeth. Anyway, Ann Arbor is no Palm Beach. For example last night I went out with some friends in Ann Arbor and enjoyed some local beers during a 10p-midnight happy hour, while listening to a pretty good cover band at an Irish Pub. In Palm Beach the scene is different. One night some kid had some people push his Lamborghini out of a parking spot, and then proceeded to get in and peel out of the parking lot at many miles per hour. Everyone at the bar probably thought the kid was a complete tool. That type of thing just doesn't happen in Ann Arbor. I think snow tires on a Lamborghini would probably look stupid anyway.

Before I left I cashed in on some free burritos from Chipotle. In Ann Arbor they were giving out burritos, and apparently in Palm Beach they were giving away tremendously largely tremendous diamond engagement rings. A couple years ago they were giving out these in Palm Beach...

Bentley Continentals for EVERYONE!!!

This year it's diamond rings. Maybe they grow on trees down there, or maybe they are given out like samples of iced mocha lattes at Starbucks. It's pretty shocking really. Now I know some of these kids cannot possibly afford such trinkets, so I'm just going to assume that they've just gotten extremely proficient at jewel theft. Maybe I'll explore starting a jewel theft cooperative in my Entrepreneurial Studies class this term.

I've decided to put Finance and Accounting behind me and explore some of the other types of classes offered here at Michigan. I'm taking a negotiations class, which I absolutely know will give me some blog fodder.

That's really all I got. This is second semester senior year all over again. Everyone's all "dude, we gotta go out hard" and there's something to be said for that. We'll see who is all talk and who is for real I guess. All I know is that I'll appreciate Second Semester Senior Year: Part Two way more than I appreciated Second Semester Senior Year: Part One.

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.