A hazy shade of winter...and spring...and autumn

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It does not rain all the time in Seattle. That's a myth. In fact, most people who say that to me live in cities where it rains more. Flipping through the 2004 New York Times Almanac (which the NYTimes shipped to me free for some reason; thanks to the grey lady), I found the following average annual rainfall in inches for some major U.S. cities:
59.74" New Orleans
57.55" Miami
48.61" Atlanta
44.77" Houston
44.12" New York City
43.81" Boston
41.42" Philadelphia
39.00" Washington, D.C.
38.85" Seattle
What is true about Seattle is that it is cloudy. Not all the time, but pretty damn close. 226 days out of the year, to be exact. The weather here does not pound you into submission with cruel winter cold or withering summer heat so much as it saps you of skin tint and cheer through its abiding, unchanging grey.
Somewhere around this time of year, it starts to get to me. Saturday, in the late morning, the sun poked through, and seeing clear skies for a good stretch in all directions, I jumped on my bike and headed around the top half of Lake Washington. The sunshine was deceptive; on the trail, riding into a stiff and chilly breeze, I struggled to stay warm. Just as I reached the farthest point from my house and turned around, the rain began to fall. Lightly at first, but steady, and soon I was drenched and frozen. I cussed my way home like a sailor.
It's not so much the rain itself that I dislike. It's the way the rainwater chills my bones, decreases my braking power, and leaps off of my rear tire like a miniature fountain, soaking my back in water and mud. Cleaning one's bike and chains after a ride in the rain is a messy hassle.
About twenty minutes after I returned home, the sun re-appeared for a few hours. Baseball teams hold hold spring training in Florida and Arizona for a reason. Spring cycling in Seattle sucks.

Rach and Maktub

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Horacio Gutierrez was the guest soloist with the Seattle Symphony last Friday. Everyone knows his piano concertos no. 2 and no. 3, but until that concert, I didn't know that Rachmaninov had written a fourth piano concerto. After listening to the fourth, I can understand why it isn't played as often as the second and third. It's a finger-tangling endeavor, as expected, but isn't as melodious as its siblings.
Dave organized a group outing to see Maktub at Neumo's that same night. Their up-tempo stuff is danceable funky. Reggie Watts has a cool do.

Elk Grove United School District v. Newdow

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Michael Newdow supposedly is an early favorite for next year's Academy Award's best actor nomination after his performance before the Supreme Court arguing that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.
What caught my eye in the appeal (PDF file) was this description of "ceremonial deism," as described by Circuit Judge Goodwin:
Some, who rather choke on the notion of de minimis, have resorted to the euphemism "ceremonial deism." See, e.g., Lynch, 465 U.S. at 716, 104 S. Ct., at 1392 (Brennan, J., dissenting). But whatever it is called (I care not), it comes to this: such phrases as "In God We Trust," or "under God" have no tendency to establish a religion in this country or to suppress anyone's exercise, or non-exercise, of religion, except in the fevered eye of persons who most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity. Those expressions have not caused any real harm of that sort over the years since 1791, and are not likely to do so in the future. As I see it, that is not because they are drained of meaning. Rather, as I have already indicated, it is because their tendency to establish religion (or affect its exercise) is exiguous.
...we will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public setting. "God Bless America" and "America The Beautiful" will be gone for sure, and while use of the first three stanzas of "The Star Spangled Banner" will still be permissible, we will be precluded from straying into the fourth. And currency beware! Judges can accept those results if they limit themselves to elements and tests, while failing to look at the good sense and principles that animated those tests in the first place. But they do so at the price of removing a vestige of the awe all of us, including our children, must feel at the immenseness of the universe and our own small place within it, as well as the wonder we must feel at the good fortune of our country. That will cool the febrile nerves of a few at the cost of removing the healthy glow conferred upon many citizens when the forbidden verses, or phrases, are uttered, read, or seen.

A close call for the top seed

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Amy nearly got knocked out of the Apprentice tourney last night. She suffered her first loss and failed to impress with a terrible promotion idea. $300 car rental giveaway? Even non high-rollers would fail to find that enticing in a casino where million dollar slot machine jackpots are advertised everywhere in lights.
Also, and this may be sneaky editing on the part of the show, but it sure seemed as if Amy lied in the boardroom when she said that she didn't recall who came up with that idea. The earlier scene at the car dealership seemed to indicate that it was Amy's idea.
Katrina exited, as expected, though with less snarling than I'd anticipated. I thought she'd tear into Amy but the two of them were fairly diplomatic in the Boardroom, which is unfortunate for the show's drama quotient. So all the top seeds advanced to the Final Five.
I have to rejigger the seeds after seeing a more aggressive, competitive, and feisty Bill this week. Amy named him as her top competitor (ooh, take a cold shower Nick), and the show implied that he came up with the winning strategy of targeting the high rollers, displaying some of his gambling saavy relative to Idaho Troy and his sidekick HBS BS'er and Manhattan Wall Street legend Kwame Jackson:
1. Amy: tough round for the top seed. Not picked during team re-balancing, culpable for a terrible promotion idea, and duplicitous in the boardroom. Still in the Don's favor, though. It would be shocking if she didn't survive to the final round showdown.
2. Bill: Stepping up. Perhaps he's simply been playing coy all this time. He called out Troy for a showdown at high noon (during a private interview on camera, but at least it's out there now) and chased off the other team's models from the VIP check-in area. Were those celebratory cigars from that start-up of his? He's impressed me as the smartest of all the candidates thus far.
3. Troy: the country bumpkin is a fish out of water when not doing sales. He's not really president material.
4. Nick: minimal screen-time this week, except while trying to pull off the biggest sales job of his career: hawking himself to Amy. His facial expression when Amy named Bill as her toughest competitor was fantastic.
5. Kwame: skipped out on work to visit the circus with Troy, and still spends most of his time high-fiving with his Idaho homeboy who he refers to as T-Roy.

Review: The Ladykillers

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Dave and I attended a screening of the Coen brothers remake of The Ladykillers earlier this week. I've not seen the original starring Alec Guinness though I've heard good things about it.
The original is described as a comedy of manners, and this remake retains that aspiration, but what surprised me is how unmannered most of the comedy was. The gang of robbers consists of a series of caricatures, most of which caused my eyes to roll. The most convincing performance might be by a painting of the late Mr. Munson. I'm still grasping for the subtle, offbeat humor of the early Coen brothers work, like Raising Arizona. Not that it's all bad. The whole is somewhat greater than the sum of the parts. Irma Hall and Tom Hanks capitalize on the occasional juicy line of dialogue from the Coen brothers, and when they do it's witty and wonderful.
But viewed as part of a creative continuum, this movie and their other recent genre efforts Intolerable Cruelty and The Man Who Wasn't There leave me pining for the 1984-1999 Coen brother vintages. They can cover these genres just fine, but their genius is most manifest in work that's uniquely their own. Even the sharpest knives can dull with age and misuse.

How to have multiple Orkuts

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I resisted all the invitations to join Friendster and all those other community sites, but a while back I finally caved and signed up for Orkut.
I don't get the hype. I haven't found any use for these social networking sites. Whoo-hoo, I'm connected to five people who connect me to three million other people. Yee-ha, I'm so popular. What's the point? Everyone's coming out with one. Not since the latest digital download music store has more capital been invested in more money-wasting me-too ventures. What a waste of creative energy.
That's not to say the Finnish software engineer after whom Orkut was named isn't an amusing character.
As for the origin of

The Lost Weekend

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The ESPN.com front page monster graphic jinx strikes again. Brutal.


It's only now, after a few days of silence, that I've overcome my depression and felt strong enough to sit back down at the keyboard. What analogy can best express the pain of having your team get bounced out of the NCAA Tournament? Since we're dealing with heartbreak, I think that women are the most appropriate metaphorical building block.
You've met a gorgeous woman, gone on a few dates, find out she's actual funny and smart and shares some of your interests, and thing seem to be going well. This was Stanford men's hoops during the regular season. At the start of the year, no one knew what to expect, but certainly they seemed to have potential at first glance. If things came together, they could surprise a lot of people. Stanford would need health across the board, especially of perenially injured point guard Chris Hernandez and power forward Justin Davis. Josh Childress could be the difference-maker, the one star player capable of being an All-American and carrying the team at times. Matt Lottich was back to hit the clutch three pointers, and Rob Little and Matt Haryasz joined Davis and Childress to form a big front line. And, as usual, a Mike Montgomery team would play tough defense and force teams to shoot lights out to beat them.
They started strong, and early wins against Kansas, Gonzaga, and Arizona raised everyone's expectations. This was like taking a woman on a date to a basketball game and having her suddenly point out that the coach should switch to a box and one defense to clamp down on the opposing team's center. Shocking and wonderful. Enough to cause a guy to well up. This was without Josh Childress, out for the first third of the season. His return was like going to her place to pick her up, and while you're waiting for her to change, you scan her CD collection and discover half the CDs are ones you own.
The Pac-10 wasn't deep this year, but Stanford's consistent dominance through the heart of the Pac-10 schedule was still impressive. This was the honeymoon period. No fights, just good times. In the movies, these are the musical montages with the candlelight dinners, figure skating in Rockefeller Center (Oops! The girl falls to the ice. Helping her up, you fall to the ice on top of her. Laughter all around!), two straws inserted in the same ice cream sundae, cuddling by a campfire under the stars, all that.
And then, near the end of the season, signs of trouble. Davis tore his MCL and was knocked out for the remainder of the regular season. The weakness of the Pac-10 meant that Stanford overcame his loss to continue to win, but they weren't being tested in the way they needed to be. It showed in their play, which became increasingly sloppy near the end of the year. They lost their killer instinct. Like a relationship that hasn't been tested. You know at some point she'll find your porn collection, or she'll toss her pink something-or-other in with your whites and turn all your undershirts pink. The first stumble. The Cardinal should have lost a few games at the end of the year, but some miraculous comebacks (Oregon) and last-minute shots (Arizona, Washington State) bailed them out.
The UTSA game in the first round was a blowout, but UTSA actually cut the Stanford lead to 6 at some point in the second half. That should never have happened. Offensively, Stanford was not playing clean. Turnovers, poor shooting, and silly fouls were killing Stanford. The NCAA Tournament may be the most exciting event in sports, but it's not always because of great basketball. You realize watching the supposed best of the best just how thin these college teams are, and how many lousy players and how much sub-par coaching pervades college hoops.
The Alabama game demonstrated the danger of such sloppy play for Stanford. Despite playing terribly, Stanford used its tight defense to shut down Alabama the first 12 minutes of the second half. With 8 minutes and change left on the clock, the Cardinal had a 13 point lead. I thought it was in the bag.
And then they went cold. And Alabama hit a couple huge 3-pointers, and suddenly the crowd was going nuts. Neutral crowds love the underdog in the first few rounds of the NCAA's, and if you let one stick around, the crowd will start to swell behind them, and they'll gain the confidence and swagger to stand up to you, and then you tighten up and that's when it all falls apart.
Alabama built up to a seven, eight point lead, and as the clock ticked down and Stanford missed shot after shot, I felt that sickening feeling in my stomach, the air of doom as you sense it slipping away. It's like bringing her to a club and then seeing her trade flirtatious smiles with some chump across the room. Disbelief, denial, and then panic as you realize you're losing her, or maybe you already lost her but just didn't realize it. Childress, the only scorer on Stanford able to create his own shot, picked up his fourth foul and then for some reason drew a stupid blocking foul right on the next possession to foul out with over three minutes left.
Still, despite all that, somehow Stanford ended up getting one last 3-pointer at the buzzer for the tie. Unfortunately, it was taken by Dan Grunfeld, son of Ernie Grunfeld, and not someone you want to see taking the last shot if you're a Cardinal fan, especially this day. He fumbled his way through the game, committing fouls, turning the ball over, missing open jump shots. His last shot was no different. It clanked off the rim, and everyone around me rejoiced as I covered my eyes in disgust. Yes, that's her leaving the club with that other guy (Alabama), both of them tipsy and giddy with love, you left to conjure sickening images of the kinky hijinks to ensue between them that evening.
Despite all that, it was a lot of fun up until the 'Bama game. As a season ticket holder, Sang was given first dibs on some tickets to the NCAA's West (Phoenix) Region 1st and 2nd round games at Key Arena. He snagged me the tickets early last year, seemingly before the college hoops season had even started. That Stanford ended up the #1 seed in the West was a bonus, but the liquor in the mixed drink was the fact that last Thursday and Saturday we found ourselves sitting in the fifth row, and only the row just ahead of us was occupied.

The view from our cushy fifth-row seats


Very early on I realized that everyone around me was rooting against Stanford. At first it annoyed me--where's the UW Pac-10 loyalty? Then I realized with some pleasure that finally, Stanford was strong enough in men's hoops that everyone was dying to see them upset. So that's how it feels to be a Yankees fan. To be a fan of a winning team. Feels (well, at least at that point) pretty good.
We were close enough that I have to concur, as much as it hurt me to do so, that the Stanford mascot, the Tree...

...looks like a cheap homemade Halloween costume compared to such mascot icons as the Michigan State Spartan dude. Check him out. That is one solid, top quality mascot uniform.

I shudder to think how much his costume costs, given that an unsightly, generic Rebel General Mascot costume runs $750.
From our seats we could also spot a Southern Illinois assistant coach that looked to be the Shooter of his team (those who don't understand the Shooter reference, please see Hoosiers or at least read Sports Guy's Cliffs Notes). Every team has one (The tie that doesn't reach the belt is not an attractive look, especially on a more portly physique).


The first round is exhausting, four games divided among two sessions. Each of the Thursday sessions' two games were separated by a half hour, and each game had twenty-minute halftime intermissions. The two sessions themselves were also separated by about two hours. The sum of all this is that we were sitting on our butts for about the same amount of time as a flight to Tibet. We spent enough time in that section over Thursday and Saturday that some of the people who were sitting near us may end up receiving invitatios to my wedding. Everyone except that guy in the middle of our aisle who forced up to get up to let him out every five minutes so he could go get some other piece of junk food to eat. As I recall, the last time we had to get up to let him out, some ambulance workers were carrying him off in a stretcher.
That's also a lot of time to kill with the same set of jokes. How many times do you think #5 on Nevada has heard wisecracks about being Shawn Kemp's first illegimate child? At least ten as that's how many times we told that joke to ourselves during Thursday's second session (it was fresh in my mind because we had just run itno Shawn Kemp out in Belltown the previous Saturday while we were out sending Dan off in style. Kemp was at a nondescript bar hitting on some not-so-attractive women. Really, the sad thing about sports stars making so much money is not the sheer amount of the money but the casual nature in which they throw it all away.)


Speaking of Nevada, they provided the most thrilling pair of games I saw in person. First, they made a huge comeback against Michigan State to pull out the first game, despite staying with a completely ineffective and loose 2-3 zone in the first half that exemplifies the inconsistent play and coaching I mentioned earlier.
Then, on Saturday, they jumped on Gonzaga from the opening tip, stunning the masses of Zag faithful who had commuted five hours from Spokane to support their team. Nevada Wolf Pack point guard Todd Okeson was unconscious, taking over from the opening tip. Okeson controlled the game, hitting jumper after jumper. He was feeling it, and the entire crowd was feeling him feel it, and it was electric. He ran circles around the acclaimed point guard of Gonzaga, Blake Stepp, a great player in his own right who picked the worst time to have horrible shooting nights in back to back games. The road back to Spokane was paved with Stepp's bricks.
Add in a day at Andy's house on Friday to watch that day's games in his basement entertainment room, the Helmet Head, replete with five television screens, and it becomes apparent why Andy dubs it the Lost Weekend. The quality of discourse on Friday was no better than that at the stadium on Thursday or Saturday. Our major disagreement came over the Microsoft Great Moments commercials. A lot of the guys there found them hilarious. I think they're terrible.
By Sunday, the orgy of basketball had left me spent. My team is out, and I no longer care who wins or loses it all. It's doubly true because I made the cardinal (pun intended) mistake of choosing my brackets with my heart and putting Stanford down to go all the way. I'm putting college hoops behind me until the fall, when I'll fall in love all over again.

Even the Valpo mascot was exhausted by weekend's end


USPS to pull sponsorship of Lance Inc.?

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An Ad Age article claims the USPS is going to pull its sponsorship of the USPS cycling team at the end of this season. As much as I've enjoyed watching Lance the Posties in the last several tours, I can't say I blame the USPS. Sports sponsorships, like naming stadiums, has never struck me as a very efficient or effective use of marketing dollars. It's not as if people sit there thinking, "Hey, wait, they have people that actual deliver mail? You mean I don't have to drive my letters over to people anymore? What a concept! I have to buy some of these so-called stamps and give this service a try!"
Anyway, if the USPS drops out, some other deep-pocketed and probably American corporation will undoubtedly step in and fill the void.

The Sweet Six

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I barely managed to fill out my bracket this morning. Yes, my Apprentice bracket. Here are my odds on the remainder of the tourney.
First, a survey of the carnage to date:
Bowie/Jason/David
We never really knew you, flattened as you were by the women's steamroller of shameless sex appeal.
Sam
The Apprentice would not be as much fun if everyone was a strong candidate. That might be better for Trump's business (the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the boardroom, still to be acknowledged, is what business the Apprentice will actually run), but if everyone in the early rounds of American Idol were rigorously pre-screened, the show wouldn't have William Hungs to parade in commercials and outtakes, tarred and feathered, and Simon Cowell couldn't use his snarky voice. Early rounds of elimination-style reality shows need their human disasters, and so let's all pay tribute to the Sam's of the world who whore themselves for their fifteen minutes of fame so that we can have 15 minutes of self-satisfied derisive laughter around the water cooler.
My favorite moment remains the time Sam was waiting outside the boardroom and pantomined the human evolutionary chart by lying prone on the ground, getting on his hands and knees, then standing up hunched over, and finally standing tall as Homo Erectus.
Kristi
When she finally got pulled into the Boardroom, Trump expressed amazement because she had "shown so much" up until then. Huh? I didn't think she'd showed anything, other than her long legs in one of her numerous interview spots in the early episodes. Maybe Trump was referring to all she had shown in her cameo in Red Shoe Diaries 17.
Tammy
For calling Regis Phil and for driving Carson Daly to the edge (which for him manifests itself as a wry comment and an arched eyebrow or two) by constantly pushing him to give his pal Tiger Woods a call to propose a round of golf, Tammy deserves special commendation for pop culture obliviousness (Omarosa is a contender in this category as well for not being able to pronounce Isaac Mizrahi's name; these sure are some sheltered people). She got kicked out for extreme disloyalty that Trump found "obnoxious," but I thought her honesty was refreshing. However, I still don't understand her comment about the team being duped.
Katrina and Troy both wanted to renovate the same apartment, and Katrina insisted they write down their choices on a piece of paper. Why that was necessary I have no idea. Instead of jotting down one of the apartments, Troy wrote down "whatever you want" on his paper, driving Katrina to try to reduce him to ashes with laserbeams from her eyes. So they flipped a coin for it and Troy won. How is a flipping a coin a dupe? He had said he wanted the second apartment before he eavesdropped on Katrina's conversation with her team and heard her choose the same place.
Jessie
The first to beg for her life in the Boardroom. ("Please don't fire me Mr. Trump!") Trump did say to Kristi that he was disappointed she didn't fight for herself in the Boardroom, but begging seems so undignified.
Ereka
Temper, temper. Actually, temper, temper, temper. Ereka was an emotional active volcano the entire time, obviously not taking cues from the steely demeanor of man-eater and Trump left-hand lieutenant Carolyn Kepcher (one of the most imposing women to ever grace the small screen). Her open-the-kimono sales pitch for Trump Ice ("Hi, we're being tasked with creating buzz for Trump Ice. Would you like to buy a few pallets?") was like something a third-grade girl scout would conjure up: "If we sell the most Thin Mints our troop gets to go on a trip to Disneyland!" Her obvious preferential treatment of twin sister/gal pal Katrina and her sly attempt at forming a Survivor coalition with Bill marked her as a schemer and a lousy leader who places personal friendships above actual performance.
Don't take this harsh criticism as meaning I wouldn't tune in to a special Apprentice 1 on 1 competition special episode between Omarosa and Ereka for the right to be the apprentice to the Apprentice.
Omarosa
The first several episodes, I wasn't as put off by her arrogance as many were. If she could back up her 'tude with some productivity, she'd be nothing less than another version of the Donald. But it turned out to be all bluster. Her hypochondriactic tendencies after the plaster/cement from the grassy knoll gave her a "concussion" was childish, her negotiating skills while trying to sell Trump Ice were amateurish, and when she didn't feel like dealing with members of her team she'd hang up on them and leave them shouting into their cellphone communicators on the sidewalk. An unmitigated disaster.
For entertainment value, though, she's up there with Sam, Nick, and Troy. Her Boardroom breakdown guaranteed her enshrinement in the Reality Show pantheon, and really, is that so terrible a fate? The size of the delta between her the business woman she sees in the mirror and the one we see through the tube may be as large of that of Sam or Nick.
Heidi
Another of the female hotheads. Not since Tony Soprano's mistresses have we encountered such an assemblage of female rage. Heidi is, by self-proclamation, feisty. On her good days, she's that and also hard-working. On her bad days she's constantly cussing and ranting and driving everyone nuts because she's letting someone else drive her nuts. In other words, she's a useful worker bee (if you could tolerate her constant griping) but not management material.
Here's hoping her mom makes it out of cancer treatment okay, though.
On to the Sweet Six. Odds in parentheses...
Katrina (50-1)
Soon she'll have a lot of free time to join her girlfriend Ereka to simmer and seeth over the injustice of it all. If she hadn't opened her mouth to kiss Ereka's ass in the Boardroom after the Trump Ice debacle, perhaps Trump would have forgotten about her tantrums after the apartment renovation episode. As it is, she's too much of a hothead to be leading any business unit.
She criticized Bill for capitalizing on her sex appeal in the pedicab assignment, forgetting she was parading around the sidewalks of Times Square in twenty-inch heels the week of the Planet Hollywood competition.
Kwame (20-1)
The pedigreed MBA hasn't show much thus far except for realizing that the price of gold is not really negotiable while the price of a Callaway Big Bertha is. He doesn't seem to offend anyone else--that Omarosa was willing to cry on his shoulder is his greatest accomplishment to date--but he also hasn't displayed the spark or leadership or insight that you'd expect from a Harvard Business School grad. At least he could flash some trademark HBS ego from time to time. We need more drama, Kwame. Don't go quiet into that good night.
Nick (15-1)
I've never met a copier salesman, but I can grok Nick if you replace "copier" with "used-car." His delusions of sales grandeur exploded in the Trump Ice episode in which he made the analogy Nick:sales as Pope:prayer and then proceeded to strike out with a distributor. Then, in the Boardroom, he professed to bringing a certain "charisma" and "energy" to his sales pitches. For someone who does sales for a living, his demeanor during his pitches screamed smarmy sales guy, and that's either to be expected or quite surprising. What it doesn't scream is Apprentice.
Nick's not an idiot, though, and he showed himself a good judge of talent when they first broke up the boys and the girls. Some leaders succeed by surrounding themselves with good people and delegating tasks appropriately. Trump damned him with faint praise during his 10 minute visit to Trump's palace, a reward for winning the art auction (I kept waiting for Trump to extend the back of his hand and allow Nick to kneel and kiss it). Trump said that even when he said that Nick was doing bad, he wasn't doing that bad. That's pretty bad.
At this point, Nick most optimistic scenario is that he ends up dating Amy who ends up as Trump's Apprentice.
Bill (10-1)
Bill is like Kwame and Amy in that he's agreeable and reasonable. Is he a leader? He hasn't shown himself to be assertive or decisive. He needs to trust his own thinking and step forward more. Self-confidence attracts those who lack it.
Troy (5-1)
Ah, the sneaky fox from Idaho, the "country bumpkin" with the saavy of the gifted human charmer. His removal of his belt before the meeting with the Fab Five from Queer Eye didn't accomplish as much as he claimed, but it demonstrated his ability to read others and react appropriately. Is he equipped to lead a company, though? Doubtful. He needs to head up sales, though. He's a closer.
Amy (3-1)
Can she pull off the undefeated Apprentice season? In her own quiet way, she's a very cunning diplomat who has managed to avoid making any strong enemies, and she's even attracted a puppy dog in Nick. She hasn't shown any overt leadership or brilliant ideas to remember her by (advertising on the back of the pedicabs was smart but an obvious one; not surprisingly, it came from the one contestant with Internet experience since that was the only business model of hundreds of Internet flameouts), but she hasn't made any obvious mistakes (her seeming interest in Nick is her worst display of judgment thus far) and she's clearly the player of choice among her teammates. Trump was right: if she's everyone else's first choice as a teammate everytime there's a redraft, then they've already elected her the strongest leader. I'd like to see her lead a team one of these weeks, and I'd like to see someone step up to challenge her.

Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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"How happy is the blamelss Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot:
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."
                                Alexander Pope

I enjoy a lot of movies, but rare is the movie that makes me think, "Ooh, I wish I had made that movie. I could have made that movie (if I were that clever and inspired)!" The last time I felt that was watching Lost in Translation.
I had that feeling tonight, about midway through a screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's some kind of brilliant! Charlie Kaufman proves yet again that he is the most creative lunatic of a screenwriter working today, and director Michel Gondry fulfills the promise he displayed in his music videos (which I love; you can catch them on this DVD from the very cool Director's Series) and his movie directorial debut Human Nature.
ESOTSM is the type of movie I'm ready to see again as soon as I walk out the theater. In this case, the second time through will be an attempt to detect all the clues I missed the first time around--it's a mind bender. It's also a clever comedy and a playful riff on the nature of love and memory. Gondry capitalizes on Kaufman's conceit that one can selectively erase memories to produce some of most humorous visual metaphors on film: as memories are erased, people and objects literally lose color and then fade away or disappear or crumble. Occasionally memories merge, leading to some visual juxtapositions that act as sight gags.
This is not the type of science fiction that stands up to heavy scrutiny, even if you are optimistic about the advances in neuroscience. The idea that one's memories can be selectively purged is merely the launching pad for a series of intriguing meditations. If all our worst memories of a former lover were erased, would we fall in love with that person again? Is attraction then fated and not merely the product of context and environment? If you knew how another person had successfully wooed a girl, could you borrow those strategies and also win her heart? Is forgetfulness truly bliss?
Only two minor quibbles. One is that Jim Carrey doesn't convey true heartbreak and longing in the same way that, say, John Cusack did in Say Anything. But he's by no means a weak link, the rest of the cast is uniformly strong, especially the gifted Kate Winslet. Secondly, I agree with Anthony Lane that the movie could have ended just a tad earlier, when it had just finished cycling back on itself like a Mobius strip.
Movies like this are expensive loves. First there's the movie ticket. Then I'll have to own the soundtrack. And the script. Of course, inevitably, I'll buy the DVD. I could have all memories of the movie erased from my mind, but I suspect I'd just end up stumbling in to see it again, and then I'd be sitting here writing to tell you, for the second time, that it's the first great movie of 2004.
P.S.: Michel Gondry also directed the video for Polyphonic Spree's "Light and Day/Reach for the Sun" from the ESOTSM soundtrack. Like the movie, it's bloody fun.
UPDATE: Look at all the 100's from the critics! Just one mediocre review thus far.

Confusing naming conventions

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The NCAA regions this year are named St. Louis, Phoenix, East Rutherford, and Atlanta. It's one level of precision too many; the old naming convention of East, South, West, and Midwest worked fine. Where is East Rutherford, anyway?
It reminds me of the naming convention at the Pacific Place parking garage in downtown Seattle, perhaps the best value of any parking garage in a major city in the U.S. To help shoppers remember what floor they parked on, the garage labels its floors (from top to bottom) Seattle, Hong Kong, Sydney, Bangkok, and San Francisco, and each floor is also color coded. The city names and colors are lousy mnemonics, though, because they have no discernible relation to the floor number (Or maybe they do? Pray do tell if you know something I don't). They're simply two arbitrary keys. I often see dazed shoppers wandering up and down the aisles, searching in vain for their automobile.

Yankees payroll

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Just how egregious is the Yankees payroll this year? The Yankees have always been rich, but the A-Rod deal seemed to set everyone off. Fans to general managers have lamented that this time Steinbrenner has gone too far, that baseball's competitive balance has reached its logical end.
But, as some analysts have noted, the Yankees have always had one of the top payrolls in baseball. It's only now that they're winning that people are griping. A massive payroll is no guarantee of victory.
Still, a payroll of nearly $190 million seemed outrageous. I was curious how far overboard the Yankees had gone this time so I went back to compare Yankee payrolls against the total MLB payroll for every year since 1977 (the first year free agency in baseball really took off), using data from Doug Pappas's website and, for 2004, from Dugout Dollars (both are great sites for this type of data; this Internet thing might just catch on). Click on the image below to see a larger image of the graph.


A few things I learned. One is that the Yankees haven't always had the highest payroll in baseball. For a stretch from 1989 to 1993, not only did they fail to have the highest payroll, they ranked as low as 10th among all teams. It's important to note, however, that from 1990 to 1993, Steinbrenner was banned from baseball by Fay Vincent over the Boss's dealings with gambler Howard Spira. Is it also a coincidence that the Yankees had a losing record from 89 through 92, four of only five seasons in which they've had a losing record since 1977?
Steinbrenner returned as Yankees GM in 93, and that would be the last time the Yankees weren't the highest paid team in baseball. They've also had a winning record every season since and captured four World Series.
This season, however, their payroll is high even by Yankees standards. The Yankees currently make up nearly 10% of all of MLB's payroll (9.5%, to be exact), the highest percentage since 1977. I'm guessing it's the highest of the modern era. Their payroll is 43% larger than the second largest payroll, that of the Red Sox. The Yankees are taking their lavish spending to new heights.
Despite that, it's difficult to conclude that it's the end of competitive balance in the sport. Though the Yankees have four World Series titles in the last 11 years, you could argue that the team with the highest payroll should have more than that. After all, the Bulls won six NBA titles in eight years, and basketball has a salary cap. I suspect that competitive parity in football has more to do with the number of players required to field a team than with the salary cap in that sport.
And, as plenty of other teams have shown over the years (A's, Marlins, Angels), it's perfectly possible to field competitive teams with modest payrolls. In the playoffs, in a short series, anything can happen. The Yankees are a very old team, and their farm system is weak. This sudden spike in their payroll might be the desperate thrashing of a franchise trying to stave out some lean years on the horizon. They rode an unusually strong nucleus of homegrown talent (Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite) to a couple of World Series victories, but unless they want their payroll to continue to mushroom, they'll have to grow from within at some point.
The Yankees are also playing by the rules laid down in the last collective bargaining agreement which all the other owners signed off on. As long as the population of cities follows a Zipf distribution, the Yankees will likely always swim in the biggest pond and have the largest treasure chest of revenue to spend. The Yankees bring in more money to baseball than any other team, and it floats the boat higher for all the teams on board. That some small market team owners choose to take their share of the pot and put it in their back pocket rather than investing it in trying to field a more competitive team is a loophole in the system. As Baseball Prospectus noted in their Yankees introduction this year, since the luxury tax was put into place, the Yankees have actually stepped up their spending while all other teams have treated the luxury tax threshold as a de facto salary cap. Bud Selig can argue until he's blue in the face that he helped to negotiate an agreement that restored competitive hopes to all teams in baseball, but if anything the payroll disparity between the largest and smallest teams has only increased since the CBA.
The players certainly aren't going to argue for a salary cap. You don't see players from other teams complaining about the Yankees free spending. That's because a salary cap would hold down the collective salaries of all players in baseball.
What free agency and the lack of a salary cap has done is give the Yankees a higher margin of error than other teams. When you can afford more players than other teams, you have a larger talent base from which to select. You can offload player development to other teams and then pick off stars when they hit free agency and are valued at market prices that other teams are unwilling to pay (e.g. Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Gary Sheffield). Steinbrenner's "payroll-is-no-obstacle" attitude has managed to stave off the Yankees down cycle.
My jealousy of the Yankees is no different than the envy I felt of kids whose parents spoiled them silly and purchased them the box of 64 Crayola crayons in grade school when I had to settle for a sorely inadequate palette of 16. The Yankees are spoiled, and if they are healthy, they will field the strongest lineup in baseball.
I admit to a certain fascination with seeing just how far Steinbrenner is willing to go. If he fails to win a World Series this year (oh, let us hope), what will he do next? I do admire his competitiveness. If his team starts to flounder, will he start calling players into his office like his friend Donald Trump and fire them on the spot? The sheer volume of joy/schadenfreude that Yankees struggles would bring to baseball fandom in 2004 is staggering. It's a magnitude of happiness that no amount of Steinbrenner's money could buy.

Hockey fighting

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I don't follow hockey much, so perhaps more knowledgeable fans can explain the phenomenon of hockey fighting to me. I enjoy the occasional sports fight as much as the next guy. It reminds me of those times in grade school when someone in the cafeteria would shout "Fight!" and all of us would drop our food and dash over to form a large circle around two kids wrestling and beating the snot out of each other. But in most sports, as on the playground, some authority figure, a teacher or a referee or an umpire, always steps in to try and break things up.
In hockey, as far as I can tell, when two guys start fighting, the refs stand around for a while and let the guys punch each other in the face. If, as some claim, this permissive culture is a ploy to attract more non-hockey aficionados to the sport, I can speak as a non-hockey fan and say that I wouldn't watch a hockey game on television in the hopes of witnessing a fist fight. Brawls play well on Sportscenter, but only as a diversion. The crowd that enjoys and craves that type of spectacle watches WWE.
Hockey works from a disadvantage. It's a difficult sport for young kids to learn because of the scarcity and expense of rinks. There's a reason, I suspect, that so many great players come from Canada and the Soviet Union and Minnesota and the New England area: it's bleeping cold there. It's difficult to appreciate the nuances and rules of a sport when you don't play it growing up. I still don't understand all the rules of hockey, but even many casual sports fans can explain the basics of basketball, baseball, and football. Not so for hockey.
But watching a hockey game live is awesome. I've been to a few Blackhawks games live and realized that the speed and choreography of the game only comes through from a seat near the rink. TV reduces the movements of the players to a block of color moving a few inches across a 36" screen. If I were to suggest a way to turn more fans onto hockey, it would be to offer free tickets to a few games a year to non-fans. Perhaps offer a hockey ticket to the first 10,000 fans attending a baseball/basketball/football game. Pass out a glossy card outlining the basic rules and strategies of hockey at the same time.
And the NHL should put assess stricter penalties for fighting, if nothing but to minimize the chance of incidents like the Bertuzzi cheap shot that broke Steve Moore's neck. Hockey already offers plenty of opportunities for legal big hits, just as in football. Sports are enjoyable for allowing people to walk up and toe the line between aggression and outright violence, but crossing that line should remain a relic of gladiatorial times.

VIM

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Alan and Sharon, my parents, Jeff, and now James all have webcams. Once Apple released an iChat beta that was compatible with AOL IM on Windows PCs, I could no longer be the family holdout. I recently purchased an iSight. Video and audio chats over broadband? Surprisingly clear.
Now we just need to get Joannie, Mike, and Karen hooked up and get into the same time zone so we can hold family conferences online. The novelty of this old, old technology hasn't worn off yet, so if you're webcam and AOL IM enabled, ping me.
UPDATE: If you need a webcam, this one is pretty sexy.

Cognitive dissonance

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For someone who's a fairly staunch believer in sabermetric schools of thought (nowadays, the popular shorthand term for these is "Moneyball" thinking), to hear the manager of your favorite baseball team make statements like this produces a cognitive dissonance that is really uncomfortable. Rooting interests seem to be inherited from previous generations, or from one's childhood surroundings, rather than philosophically determined, and so I'll back Dusty just like I'll back Kerry even it's with a heavy dose of Pepto-Bismol.
Dusty resents the sniping, to no one's surprise. How often do you see a grown adult changing his stripes and assimilating new philosophies? I think he has skills outside of in-game tactical management that are hard to quantify. He seems to be a straight-shooter with his players, one who doesn't manage through the press, and his team respects him for that. No one doubts who's in charge in the Cubs dugout. But I believe that he wins in spite of his tactical weaknesses (e.g. abuse of starters, disdain for walks, strong preference for overpriced veterans at the expense of developing rookies), not because of them. I suspect the Cubs front office and most Cubs fans' love affair with Dusty is based in part on fundamental attribution error. After all, he was the beneficiary of the first full year of the Prior era, the blossoming of Zambrano, Wood's second full year removed from Tommy John, career resurrections from Grudzielanek and Karros, and the late season boost from Ramirez and Lofton.
I wish him well, but I'd sleep better at night if he'd stop with the 120+ pitch outings for the Cubs franchise arms. Successful leaders have to be willing to swallow their pride and assimilate effective new ideas.

Getting fat on Atkins

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A few weeks ago, I was at the grocery store shopping for pasta. The aisle was empty, and it triggered a question in my mind. Had the popularity of the Atkins diet created any noticeable and profitable investing or asset allocation strategies? Researchers have estimated that as many as 32 million Americans are on some type of high-protein, low-carb diet, and even many who aren't seem cautious in the presence of bagels and pasta.
Curious, I decided to assemble a mini-basket of stocks of publicly-traded companies that one would expect would suffer because of the Atkins revolution and compare its performance over the past year with a mini-basket of stocks of companies that might benefit from the high protein craze. I wanted pure plays in each category as much as possible, and so I crossed off companies who only derived a fraction of their revenues from carbs or protein products. Only two remained of the ones that came to mind: General Mills (cereals=high carbs) and Hormel (meat=high protein). Much to my chagrin, my first choice, Oberto Sausage Company, is family owned.
A quick Google located an article by James Glassman on this very topic. It suggested some other companies, and some further sleuthing using a few financial sites rounded out my lists. From this list, I culled five stocks for each mini-basket.
High-carb stock basket
High-protein, Atkins-approved stock basket
  • Hormel Foods (HRL)

  • John B. Sanfilippo & Son (JBSS): leading seller of nuts

  • Cal-Maine Foods (CALM): sells eggs to retailers

  • Tyson Foods (TSN): world's largest beef, pork, and chicken processor

  • MGP Ingredients (MGPI): Technically not a high-protein company, but this micro-cap develops wheat-gluten and fiber products that major bakeries can use to lower the amount of net carbs in their breads
I compared the returns for an investor who placed $1000 in each stock in each basket on February 23, 2003 and left the funds untouched for a year.
Now, before I share the results, I should note that by no means is this a scientific, controlled, well-structured test of any sort. The five stocks I selected for each basket may not represent the purest plays on this trend, and I haven't delved into the income statements to determine if the popularity of high-protein, low-carb diets is truly responsible for any changes in these company's fortunes over the chosen time period. I have neither the time nor interest to perform the type of rigorous study that I'd be comfortable using to invest my own money according to this philosophy. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I don't stocks in any of these companies, nor do I own a farm or any livestock.
All that said, the results were amusing.



Portfolio
Value on 2/23/03
Value on 2/20/04
Change
High-carb (anti-Atkins) portfolio
$5,000
$5,991
19.8%
High protein (Atkins-friendly) portfolio
$5,000
$18,816
276.3%
S&P 500 (SPX)
$5,000
$6,927
38.5%


The high-carb portfolio underperformed the S&P 500 and got walloped by the high-protein, Atkins-friendly portfolio. In particular, the stock of Cal-Maine Foods, the seller of eggs, had a sunny-side up year, moving up 951.9%. John B. Sanfilippo & Son and MGP Ingredients were also huge winners.

High-carb portfolio


Company
Stock Price on 2/23/03
Stock Price on 2/20/04
Change
General Mills
$44.49
$45.09
1.3%
Monterey Pasta
$3.90
$3.50
-10.3%
Panera Bread
$25.61
$39.50
54.2%
Interstate Bakeries
$9.24
$14.75
59.6%
American Italian Pasta
$42.36
$39.86
-5.9%


Atkins-friendly Portfolio

Company
Stock Price on 2/23/03
Stock Price on 2/20/04
Change
Hormel Foods
$20.72
$28.00
35.1%
John B. Sanfilippo & Son
$13.00
$34.50
165.4%
Cal-Maine
$3.74
$39.34
951.9%
Tyson Foods
$9.20
$15.86
72.4%
MGP Ingredients
$7.99
$20.52
156.8%


Have the high-protein stocks been overpurchased by Atkins investors? Are they overvalued now? One could examine P/E and other such ratios relative to forecasted cash flow and earnings growth to make such judgments. I'll leave that to you enterprising capitalists.
It may hurt to give up your carbs in the quest to shed a few pounds, but investing in one company versus another in the quest for a fatter portfolio is all the same. You are what you eat, and your portfolio is what you feed it.
(Some other relevant stocks for the curious: Annheuser Busch (BUD) is pushing their low-carb beer Michelob Ultra, eDiets offers online Atkins diet plans, Sanderson Farms (SAFM) is a leading poultry company that's up 196% year over year, Smithfield Foods (SFD) is the world's largest pork processor, Seaboard (SEB) is another pork processor, and Johnson and Johnson is coming out with a sugar substitute called Splenda.)

Warren Buffett's annual blog entry

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Warren Buffett updates his personal blog once a year, and it's read by thousands, if not millions. The title of his entry is the same every year: The Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's Letter to Shareholders. The 2003 version is up (PDF file).
Each year after reading his letter, I ponder the same questions. One share of BRKa, or a down payment on a house? One share of BRKb, or a new laptop?