I recently showed my college writing class The Big Short-- we just finished a paper on Karen Ho's illuminating (but rather long and repetitive) essay on Wall Street culture in the aughts: "Biographies of Hegemony: The Culture of Smartness and the Recruitment and Construction of Investment Bankers" and I wanted to show them what happened to this insulated system that Karen Ho critiques-- and my son Alex saw the cover of the DVD and decided he wanted to watch it . . . I told him it was a great movie, but long and complicated, and he said, "My favorite movie is Inception, Dad, I think I can handle it" so I sweetened the deal and told him if he endured a short lecture from me before the film started-- on mortgages and subprimes loans and stocks and bonds-- and then, at the end of the film, if he could explain the systemic failure and how the financial crash of 2008 actually happened, I would give him five dollars, and-- withour irony and in the spirit of the movie, he agreed to this; Ian also watched and endured several of my financial asides, but when it was all over (and they watched the entire thing last night) Ian declined to try to explain it for five dollars (though he claimed to understand the plot) and also declined to make a sidebet on whether Alex would be able to successfully explain the origins and nature of the crash, but Alex rose to the challenge and gave me a fairly accurate portrayal of the crisis, including mortgage backed securities, CDOs, credit default swaps, fraudulent ratings, how to short the market, premiums eating into your account, the big pay-out and the bail-out . . . the only thing he had trouble with (which the movies glosses over) is the idea that the banks were unloading toxic securities they had created onto investors before they accurately marked the price, then shorting those same investments in order to attempt to balance their books -- creating a crazy conflict of interest feedback loop . . . you can learn about it in this special episode of This American Life, "Inside Job," which details the arbitrage, fraud, and corrupt strategies and tactics that Magnetar used during the crash-- and Alex was suitably annoyed with the result, a taxpayer bailout that funded the very institutions that created the crash and paid big bonuses to many of the engineers of the bubble, a bailout that so enormous that it might be incalculable and probably resulted in the election, oddly, of Donald Trump . . . because, as Jared Vennett clairvoyantly explains at the end:
In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating-agency executives went to jail . . . the SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivative industries . . . just kidding! . . . banks took the money the American people gave them, and used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform . . . and then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers . . .
the end of that little bait and switch speech surprised both my students and my children-- but it makes sense, as it too boring and complicated to completely understand the forces tearing apart our economy-- so it's much easier to blame the other, the barbarians at the gate and the freeloaders within; anyway, I'm proud of both my kids for making it all the way through-- Ian could have defaulted to The Walking Dead and Alex has decided he's going to read the book . . . maybe if enough youngsters understand what went wrong, they'll vote some people into office that will enact some policy to prevent this kind of thing . . . or maybe they'll blow all their savings on cryptocurrency and we'll all have another great movie to watch.
One of the strangest things about the political divisiveness of our times is that amidst the misinformation and the acceptance of idiocy, amidst the low standards of morality, veracity, accountability and the ignorance of facts and the denial of science-- amidst all this gross unfiltered miasma of shit, there is so much intelligent debate and discussion and so much astounding art and literature that grapple with these very same issues in a non-partisan, intelligent fashion . . . I'm not sure if I find hope and solace in this duality, or if it's a phenomenon like the Weimar Cabaret . . . art, satire, and intellectual freedom didn't stop Hitler-- but that was before the Internet . . . so if you need a refuge from Trump America and the 24 hour stupidity cycle and if you want to actually think about some of the issues and the logic behind them-- which apparently plenty of people do-- here are three things:
1) The new Sam Harris episode (#114 Politics and Sanity) is excellent, mainly because Sam Harris doesn't talk much-- he mediates a debate and discussion between two logical, well-spoken, reasonable conservative thinkers (David Frum: senior editor at the Atlantic and speechwriter for George W. Bush, and Andrew Sullivan: who edited The New Republic and founded The Daily Dish) and they discuss topics as various as Trump, hyper-partisanship, Henry Kissinger, religion, and the legalization of marijuana . . . listening to the quality of this thought and discourse among folks with different political persuasions and the fact that Harris's podcast is quite popular will give you some hope for America (Conversations with Tyler is another hopeful indicator);
2) but not too much hope . . . I just finished Brian Alexander's new book Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town and I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be an easy and clear read that would give me some insight into Middle America, like Sam Quinones' Dreamlandand J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy . . . but while Alexander's book has elements of those texts, it does something that's less fun to read and probably way more important to understand-- it details the exact reasons that the town of Lancaster was decimated and went from one of the most desirable places to live in America (as long as you were white) to an underfunded town with a rampant drug problem, lack of jobs and human capital, and a sharp and vast divide between the haves and the have-nots . . . he delineates the entire Anchor-Hocking glass factory story in inglorious detail: the investment from private equity, the battles with the unions, the leverages, the buyouts, the lack of maintenance, the safety issues, the methods used to turn a piece of a conglomerate around and make a quick profit, the detached executives from companies like Cerberus and Global Home Products, the debt, the gutting of salaries and pensions, and the effect of global economics on an American factory; the change from factory that could make great ware for far less than it cost to sell it, things like Pyrex bakeware and auto headlight glass, and then share that profit with skilled workers in the form of salaries and pensions, into a entity in a weird conglomerate, bought by corporate raiders, put on the books in any number of ways . . . and all this for the American pursuit of cheap stuff, something of which we are all guilty-- Americans have been shopping harder and harder for the cheapest stuff-- and though apparently, if things are working well, we can make glass products in the United States and sell them here-- mainly because glass is heavy and breakable, so it's tougher to ship from overseas-- but not with the global race to the bottom fueling things, the nadir of prices, wages, and detachment; there's a short version of this story in The Atlantic, with the reminder at the end that it's not about making a product any more, it's about making money-- I'd probably recommend reading the article over the book, which was a bear-- but there is a poignant moment at the end of the book that's worth checking out: "Corporate elites said they needed free trade agreements so they got them . . . manufactures said they needed tax breaks and public money incentives to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them . . . banks and financiers said they needed looser regulations, so they got them . . . employers said they needed weaker unions-- or no unions at all-- so they got them . . . private equity firms said they needed carried interest and secrecy, so they got them . . . everybody, including Lancastrians themselves, said they needed lower taxes, so they got them . . . what did Lancaster and a hundred other towns like it get? job losses, slashed wages, poor civic leadership, social dysfunction, drugs . . ."
and so you had the lawyers and consultants plotting the sale and break-up of the Anchor-Hocking plant and getting paid one hundred times more an hour than the lowly $12 and $14 dollar an hour glass-workers, in a town where at one time everyone rubbed elbows, the factory workers, the company board, the doctors, the lawyers, and they weren't separated by a vast economic chasm . . .
3) which brings me to The Big Short-- you should read the book, of course, but Mark Baum's speech near the end of the film really sums this up; Baum is based on a real person (Steve Eisman) and played brilliantly by Steve Carell . . . he says:
"For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked . . . not once; eventually you get caught, things go south . . . when the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did"
and that is the final reminder: we did all this to ourselves, we created these systems, and it does not have to be like this . . . we are in control of how we run our government and our economy, we are in control of how we treat our workers and our citizens, and while it might be too late for my generation to fix things, perhaps if enough of the Millennials take advantage of all this clear, logical, and quite profound art, thought, and discourse that is readily available, they will change things.
The ladies were making a posterboard sign for the Elective Fair (because I was incapable) so that we could inform the students in attendance about the various English Electives available and we needed to include my friend Kevin's class but we weren't sure on the name: I insisted the class was called Sports in Literature but the ladies thought it might be Sports and Literature . . . but I convinced them that the middle word was "in" because Sports and Literature is a class where each day you read a bit and then play some kind of sport; perhaps Monday you tackle a passage from Brothers Karamazov and hit around a shuttlecock, Tuesday might be "The Wasteland" and flag football . . . and Sports in Literatureis the class Kevin teaches, a class about books like Friday Night Lights and Moneyball, literary works that contain sports (and though I convinced them with my vivid and logical argument, I was totally wrong-- the name of the course is Sports and Literature . . . absurd).
We watched Die Hard the other night with the kids, and while the movie totally holds up-- it's perfectly plotted and everything detail is important: the foot exercises, the tipped photo, the Rolex watch-- there's a celebratory moment at the end that indicates just how much times have changed; Hans Gruber's henchman Karl (who seemed to expire when John Mclane wrapped a chain around his neck and threw him over a railing) emerges from the building with an automatic rifle, and just as he is setting his sights on McLane, Sergeant Powell-- the African-American cop who trusted and believed McClane-- pulls out his gun and shoots Karl before he can fire a round . . . and we're supposed to be especially ecstatic that Powell kills Karl not just because he saves McClane, but also because Powell has been hiding behind a desk for years, as he lost his mojo when he accidentally shot a thirteen year old kid who was carrying a toy ray-gun . . . and this quick draw and execution of Karl indicates that he's back on the horse, once again confident with the gun and ready for unbridled street action.
Last week, I was discussing heel pain with my friend Greek friend Argiris-- we were both lamenting the fact that we couldn't play Friday morning basketball due to foot pain-- and he came up with an interesting theory: perhaps Achilles legendary heel wasn't metaphysical at all, perhaps he simply had plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendonitis, this would explain why he did all that melancholic brooding in his tent during the siege of Troy . . . I can certainly attest to the fact that heel pain leads to brooding, as I played indoor soccer yesterday and aggravated my plantar fasciitis and I've been depressed and brooding since then, as you can't do anything with any kind of alacrity or good spirits when every step you take hurts; as a bonus, both of these ailments are due to tightness in the calf and Achilles tendon . . . so maybe the legend about the bum heel that laid a great hero low was a simple (and very common, especially if you're wearing footwear without support . . . sandals!) physical ailment which gained mythical status after many years had passed.
This week on The Testyou'll get your daily dose of Vitamin Cunningham . . . and though she's a little short on information, she makes up for it with attitude; bonuses: a much-needed cameo from God, Stacey cleans up dog vomit, and Dave uses the plural of the word "piranha."
The new episode of Plant Money delves into the Beige Book-- the Federal Reserve's treasure trove of economic anecdotes that offer a more human report on current economic conditions-- and one snippet of information from Cleveland is that when people ordered fast food at an electronic kiosk, rather than from a human cashier, they ordered (on average) more food . . . so perhaps when people are ordering on a screen, they are less embarrassed to supersize their meal, or order three bags of fries, or add bacon, because they don't have to confess their gluttony to an actual person . . . nearly twenty years ago-- long before automated kiosks-- my friend Whitney solved this problem; after a late night at the Corner Tavern, we were waiting in line at Giovanelli's and Whitney-- a native of Virginia-- couldn't decide which Jersey specialty in which to indulge, the cheesesteak-with-egg or the fatcat, and so when he got to the front of the line, he said, "We'll have the cheesesteak and egg and the fatcat," a brilliant maneuver to disguise his decadent order . . . unfortunately, the next person in line was our friend Rob, who caught his use of the "royal we" as a tactic to order two sandwiches without the shame and publicly called him out on it: "We? Who the fuck is we? You! You are having two sandwiches . . . there's no we."
I was unloading the dishwasher and listening to Conversations with Tyler, a podcast where brilliant libertarian/conservative economist Tyler Cowen asks very smart guests profoundly long, allusion laden questions and then actually gives these very smart guests time to answer, without interrupting or interjecting very much at all-- if your upset about Trump and the Republicans and all that, it's a good reminder that not all conservatives are insane . . . and my son Alex came into the kitchen while I was listening and he asked me what I was listening to and I gave him the previous explanation, pretty much word for word and this was his reply:
"That sounds interesting,"
and I said, "It is interesting,"
and he said, "I was being sarcastic, dad,"
and so I told him I recognized that he was being sarcastic (and then I won't transcribe the rest of what I said to him, in case DYFS reads this blog).
This afternoon my acupuncturist happily awarded me the "point" of the week, which means when she stuck a needle into the anterior ligament on the inside of my left foot, I jumped, my foot jumped and she jumped . . . because my foot reacted so strongly to the stimulus . . . I accepted this honor as graciously as I could (not very . .. it hurt, but my foot feels a lot better now).
I gave it the ol' college try (actually more like the ol' middle school try) but Pulitzer prize winner Frances Fitgerald's book The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America is just too comprehensive and detailed for a dilettante like me-- she really gets into the weeds about the fundamentalist-modern conflict in religion . . . I made it about 100 pages in and I certainly learned a lot; the main lesson, which always astounds me, is that people seem to wholeheartedly and sincerelybelieve in God and the Bible and Jesus, not in an abstract "this is a good way to live and prosper" kind of way, but as a serious discipline, to be debated and and delineated, point-by-point, in a logical matter, which strikes me as absolutely insane . . . the best example of this in the book (from the pages I read) is a piece of impenetrably brilliant specious logic conceived by the Princeton scholars in the late 1800s: they determined that "the doctrine of inerrancy" in the Bible refers only to the original autograph-- the "manuscripts that came from the hands of the prophets were infallible" but since those original documents don't exist, there may be errors in translation . . . so while this hypothetical primary source Bible is the Word of God, since it has been translated, there are certainly errors . . . this is a genius strategic move because then you get to have your Eucharist and eat it too, as you can claim the Bible might be fundamental and infallible but if someone does point out a contradiction or logical conundrum, then you can blame the human translators for that particular bit.
I was inspired to read Daniel Defoe's early novel Robinson Crusoe by the stubbornly lovable steward from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins . . . and while I recognize that it is odd to get literary recommendations from a fictitious narrator, I'm glad I read the book; Crusoe is the eternal optimist, he's happy with his original station in life-- the middle state, or what "might be called the upper station of low life"-- but he's not so content that he stays at home, instead he disobeys his father and goes adventuring at sea; he makes the best of things when he is captured into slavery; he does even better for himself on his deserted island, which he tames with his patient capability in all the skills of survival, agriculture, husbandry, and good living and where he realizes that "the fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself" and ends up befriending the ex-cannibal Friday and that's where I thought the story would end, but then there are a surprising number of action-packed adventures after Crusoe is rescued from the island, in Brazil and Northern Spain, involving guns, powder, explosions, cannibals, bears and wolves and when Crusoe finally returns to England most everyone he knew is dead, he is rewarded financially by various investments and could possibly live out the rest of his days in peace and tranquility, but instead-- in a move reminiscent of when Huck Finn decides he's going to light out for the territories-- Crusoe blithely mentions the death of his wife as the reason he goes back to sea with his nephew and revisits his island in order to see the progress the natives have made since he was gone.
On the way to the nursing home (to visit my 95-year-old grandmother) my son Ian explained the complexity of the new dice system in the Star Wars RPG game they were playing later in the day-- the dice are 8 and 12 sided and have odd symbols on them; during the course of the discussion, I asked him if he knew the percentage of a side coming up on an eight-sided die and a twelve-sided die, respectively, and while he knew how to figure this out and eventually arrived at the correct answers, his mental math was fairly slow and shoddy, and then later in the day (after I took a nap) I went to the hipster coffee joint up the street and pulled out my gift certificate, an envelope sized piece of cardboard with a ledger on the back, and I bought a medium coffee for $2.94 . . . there was $11.26 left on the certificate and the barista-- a college dude-- was struggling to do the math so I quickly did it for him and said, "$8.32" and he said, "Ok . . . but let me make sure" and he took out a calculator and checked my work, pronounced it correct and then laughed and said, "the crazy thing is . . . I'm a math major" and so I told him I was giving my own kid a hard time about mental math earlier in the day and then he told me that while he couldn't subtract in his head, he could do proofs and could program a computer to do math, which I admitted was pretty impressive . . . certainly more impressive than subtracting three dollars from $11.26 and then adding the six cents back, which is what I did . . . and knowing how to do that is like knowing how to program a VCR or recall a friend's phone number and dial it on a pay phone or play Dragon's Lair, a skill that has lost its value and only indicates that you are from a previous generation.
The Test is back on the air . . . Stacey finally moved house and we have a recording space once again; this episode in a nutshell: I baffle the ladies with a 2017 wrap-up quiz, Stacey confesses why she can't join the gym, and Cunningham tells everyone exactly where they can put their New Year's Resolutions.
After my friend and podcasting partner Stacey read my candid peanut butter based confession, she went and checked her cupboard and she found five open containers of peanut butter-- check out the photo-- and although only one jar was completely empty (in comparison to the three jars I had emptied) she attributes that to the fact that she does the grocery shopping and when she thinks some of the jars are getting low, then she simply buys a fresh one . . . she cites the same reason as me for this irresponsible and wasteful behavior: she doesn't like to scrape out the jar because you inevitably get peanut butter on your hands . . . it's so much more fun to take a scoop from the smooth buttery surface of a freshly opened jar; after some discussion, we decided we're not horrible people (though our respective spouses might think otherwise) and there either needs to be a tool that can efficiently scrape a peanut-butter jar or-- and this would be even better-- peanut butter should be sold in squat truncated-cone shaped containers, which would be much easier to scrape with standard cutlery (perhaps this is a big peanut butter conspiracy, and the containers are shaped this way so people buy far more jars than they need . . . because so much peanut butter is in an "overhang" state in nearly empty jars, cached in cupboards across the nation).
My wife called me into the kitchen and presented me with exhibits A, B, and C . . .
three jars of peanut butter, in a line, on the counter;
she said, "I wanted to have an apple with peanut butter and this is what I found"
I replied "Hmm" because I wasn't sure what was going on and I didn't want to commit to a position;
she said, "open them"
and so I opened the first one--
it was empty;
I opened the second jar,
and it was empty as well;
so was the third . . .
I had put three empty jars of peanut butter back in the cabinet:
I don't like scraping peanut butter out of the jar-- you always end up getting peanut butter on your hands-- and so I'll often open a new jar . . . it's fun and easy to take those first scoops;
obviously, I did this a few times . . .
but I was saved by the fact that three empty jars goes so far beyond the pale of bad etiquette that it's hysterically funny (or at least I thought so).
My entrepreneurial (and acquisitive) twelve year old son Ian and his buddy Ben went out after the storm last week to earn some cash shoveling snow, but my thirteen year old son Alex stayed home; when I asked him why he didn't go with Ian and Ben, he said, "I don't need any money, you guys pay for everything . . . I'm going upstairs to read a comic book."
Glenn Straub claims he sold his hip ultra-modern Atlantic City casino "Revel" to Bruce Deifik because of excessive regulatory requirements and New Jersey's anti-business climate . . . and Deifik was obviously so exhausted by these rules and regulations that he had nothing left in the tank when it came time to rename the joint, so he went with the most exceedingly literal, excruciatingly generic, and extremely mundane moniker you could imagine: Ocean Resort Casino.
