Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare

Some fun facts about Jeffrey Archer from his Wikipedia entry.

• After high school he worked as a Physical Education teacher at Dover College.

• He then gained a place at Brasenose College, Oxford to study for a one-year diploma in education, though he eventually stayed there for three years, gaining anacademic qualification in teaching.

• There have been claims that Archer provided false evidence of his academic qualifications, for instance the apparent citing of an American institution which was actually a body building club, in gaining admission to Oxford University.

• One other organization Archer worked for, the United Nations Association, alleged discrepancies in his claims for expenses, and details appeared in the press in a scrambled form. Archer brought a defamation action.. [which] was eventually settled out of court...

• His wife Mary is often rumoured to have a significant role in the writing of his novels. His books are also rumored to require extensive editing by others to make them readable.

• Another scandal arose leading to his resignation in October 1986, when the press reported the "vice-girl" story. The article claimed that Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, £2,000 through an intermediary at Victoria Station to go abroad.

• In November 1999 Ted Francis, a friend (who claimed Archer owed him money) and Archer's former personal assistant Angela Peppiatt (whom Archer had been semi-maintaining) claimed that he had fabricated an alibi in the 1987 trial.

• In February 2000 Archer was expelled from the Conservative Party for five years, and in September 2000 he was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice during the 1987 libel trial.

• Archer originally was sent to Belmarsh Prison, but was moved to the category "C" Wayland Prison in Norfolk in August 2001, and to HMP North Sea Camp, an open prison, two months later.

Belmarsh Prison features prominently in Prisoner by Birth, and Wayland is mentioned in passing.

And last but not least - only in an English court (m' lord):

"There was widespread astonishment at the description the judge (Mr Justice Caulfield) gave of Mrs Archer in his jury instructions:

Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey?" The judge then went on to say of Jeffrey Archer, "Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?"

Only write about what you know.

Adieu Florent...

There have been a slew of obituaries lately, from Yves Saint Laurent to Tim Russert, not to mention my personal heartbreaker, Ruslana Korshunova. But the passing of Florent is truly humbling.

I spent many a late evening there back when it was surrounded only by rats and drag queens. And every time was fantastic. Sort of like a funkier version of Raoul's. I think the last night was New Year's eve 1991, in the good company of one Ms. D. de B. When in Rome...

Page-turners

Reading is good. It is state altering. I don't even like the book I am reading that much and I still love it. I woke up at 3:30 this morning, read for 45 minutes with two glasses of wine, and went back to sleep. The simple process of disengaging yourself from your own day-to-day immediacy and identifying with something fictional (or as I would have said 15 years ago, an Other... schmuck) is refreshing.

The current book, which is the first book I have read past page 15 in over a year, is Prisoner of Birth by Jeffery Archer. As Archer was recently in prison himself, I thought it might be more interesting than the typical spy novel (although I have never read any of his other books, of which there seem to be a ton). And it's a page-turner alright. But it reminds me a bit of the last page-turner I read, which I threw into an Italian swimming pool just over halfway through. And that was written by a classmate, none other than Dan the man Brown. The D.C. started at a rapt pace, and by about page 50 you knew the movie was coming. But at the same time, you were counting up all the loose strings that would have to be tied for the plot to really work. And the more rapt it got, the more you began to doubt the story. It all finally fell apart under its own weight, in my opinion, in the scene in the English lord's country house, where stealth was replaced by slapstick as the albino and the hero chased the grail around the living room floor. Splash!

Archer nearly got the dunk as well when the illiterate East-ender switched identities with the Lord from Edinburgh and no one noticed. He also relies too much on forced dialog to push the story along. In other words, now and then a character will say something that sounds both stiff and unlikely, but it adds a necessary piece to the plot. Rule #1, "Show, don't tell". But none of that stopped me from happily being in Mayfair last night, first at the Dorchester, then at Brown's Hotel, then on the train up to Edinburgh, then a quick stealth trip to Geneva and back to Heathrow, where I was unceremoniously arrested on the tarmac. Hmm, tune in tomorrow.

Insta-Particular

Hey, I got mentioned on Instapundit! Well, kind of - the link is to the same quote anyway... What if someone's reading my blog? Oh, what a close virtual community this is.

Nose to the grindstone

The post about Americans' on-again off-again Puritanism (mostly off-again, I would say) got me thinking of the pros and cons of the Protestant work ethic.

The Protestant work ethic, sometimes called the Puritan work ethic, is a Calvinist value emphasizing the necessity of constant labor in a person's calling as a sign of personal salvation. Protestants beginning with Martin Luther had reconceptualised work as a duty in the world for the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. The Catholic idea of good works was transformed into an obligation to work diligently as a sign of grace.

"...emphasizing the necessity of constant labor in a person's calling as a sign of personal salvation." Well, you don't hear about that much anymore.

Farming was the chosen profession (perhaps of necessity) for most 17th and 18th century Americans and colonists. The south had the slaves and not a lot of religion. The North was largely the opposite. In the North, farmers toiled the field all day, but knew the crop would amount to nothing unless the weather was good. That was the Lord's job. At harvest time, a bountiful crop was a sign that you were blessed; a bad crop meant you were spiritually frowned upon. So tithing made particular sense, as your profits were literally believed to be a joint-venture with God anyway. I think this connection between profits and grace remained ingrained in American culture through our parents' generation.

Revenge of the shitzu

I have been waiting four years for this verdict, as my post from May 2004 will attest. So it is with some satisfaction that I can report that my ignorant instinct for fairness has been proven correct. Former overpaid New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso has been largely exonerated.

New York’s highest court on Wednesday affirmed a lower court ruling that dropped four claims against the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard A. Grasso, dealing a major setback to the legacy of the former attorney general Eliot Spitzer.

I never liked Grasso much; too chummy. But he had a contract. Spitzer was a self-serving prick with zero respect for other human beings.

A mortgage in every pot

Congress may beat Illinois to the punch in bailing out "negative equity" home-owners. It appears that this legislation may become law before the 4th of July holiday, "the most sweeping government overhaul of mortgage financing since the New Deal." Whenever anyone mentions the New Deal, you have reason to hide your wallet and pay attention. From the NYT:

The centerpiece of the Senate package is a rescue-refinancing plan aimed at stemming the tide of more than 8,000 new foreclosures a day that lenders are filing across the country.

Under the refinancing plan... lenders would first have to agree to cut the principal balance of loans to roughly 85 percent of each property’s current value.

Skeptics say the plan is a handout for irresponsible borrowers and lenders, who would be able to get rid of their worst-performing mortgages, putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in risky loans.

Well, this is shaping up to be a big bailout. Given that many troubled properties have already fallen 20-30% in value, resetting the mortgage to 85% of that, or down another 15%, means the lenders are going to lose at least one-third to one-half of their money. This will be interesting to watch. Early days, but I would put odds of a disaster policy coming out at about 50%.

Poor Angelo's Almanack

As a follow up to my first post on the US mortgage juggernaut, I will note here that Countrywide Financial has just been sued by the state of Illinois. (Don't miss the juxtaposed photos of the smiling, kind, "good guy", Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, versus the scowling bad guy, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. I smell movie rights - they should both play themselves.)

If Illinois gets anywhere with this, then I guess there are only 49 states to follow suit (as it were). Countrywide, indeed. This could lead to a lot of people getting bailed out of their mortgages. Which means that if you pay tax, you are probably about to contribute. From the NYT:

Former employees told Illinois investigators that Countrywide’s pay structure encouraged them to make as many loans as they could; some loans took as little as 30 minutes to underwrite, the complaint said.

The lawsuit cited Countrywide documents indicating that almost 60 percent of its borrowers in subprime adjustable rate mortgages (requiring minimal payments in the early years, known as hybrid A.R.M.’s), would not have qualified at the full payment rate. Countrywide also acknowledged that almost 25 percent of the borrowers would not have qualified for any other mortgage product that it sold.

"ARM's" are nasty. You pay a very low interest rate for the first year or two - almost nothing - then the rate jumps up to a very high level after that. Buyers only choose ARM's if they are unaware of what they are getting, or if they assume that they will be able to resell the house before the rate resets. And for a while, a lot of people did. They also borrowed against the increased house value, effectively turning the property into a credit card.

Looks like a perfect Exhibit A for David Brooks' jeremiad on America's lapsed financial values.

Naked Cowboy impersonated by M&M

The Naked Cowboy won the first round of his lawsuit against candy maker Mars. He is suing the company for impersonating him with a giant blue M&M playing the guitar in white underwear and cowboy boots.

The lawsuit alleges that the ads violate Burck's right to privacy and infringe on his trademark by "using his likeness, persona, and image for commercial purposes without his written permission and by falsely suggesting that he endorses M&M candy."

I thought the guy abandoned his right to privacy when he first entered Times Square in his underwear. I met him on the street once, in about 1985. It was pretty cold. He was all business; would only speak in country music lyrics, insisted on taking pictures for money - a real New Yorker, in fact. But I guess you can't hang around Times Square in your underwear and chat for free. He must be getting on though.

And, yes, there is a video - here.

If wishes were horses...

...beggars would ride. And if all journalists were like David Brooks, I'd read more newspapers. He doesn't give in to cant and makes an uncompromising effort to be fair and correct, however awkward that may be. While happily and frankly admitting the failures of the current administration, he is among a minority who openly declare the "surge" in Iraq a surprising success.

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

No argument there.

Poor David's Almanack

Have Americans retained their Puritanical roots when it comes to quasi-ethical matters like not smoking, but become culturally deracinated financially? David Brooks wonders how we have wandered so far from the once-looming influence of Ben Franklin and Poor Richard's Almanack when, he claims, 56% of college kids carry at least four credit cards.

Similarly, my father, like many of his generation, belongs to the local Rotary "to give something back to the community". He and my mother ring the Salvation Army bell every Christmas (and always in some increasingly depressing shopping mall). I don't know anyone of my generation who belongs to a Rotary or Lions Club. That's because no one in my generation wants to give back to the community. While some indeed may be philanthropic, it is not towards a physical community as such, but rather towards a cause or institution, and usually in a way that smacks more of taking a victory lap than caring about the cause.

The age of Wall Street bonuses probably plays a role here as well. When a 28 year old can make more money in 12 months than a 1960's engineer could make in a career, that money comes with little sense of obligation and few cultural strings attached - outside of the latest bling. All of which may seem like fun times when things are going up; but life will be tough with no values - and no money - when they go down. And they will.

From Brooks:

The deterioration of financial mores has meant two things. First, it’s meant an explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives. Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said.

Second, the transformation has led to a stark financial polarization. On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the lottery class, people with little access to 401(k)’s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents.

Old windows

After five weeks of rain, followed by five days of relative sun, we have regressed to a typhoon. Or more specifically, to Severe Tropical Storm Fengshen, which is currently bashing the windows with rain that sounds like hail. I love the old windows in the flat, with the original brass handles that screw tight to hold the pane open. But they are a little leaky in typhoons. There are newspapers and buckets everywhere.

Pages from a cold island

This woman is very amusing. I guess you have to think quick when you only have about four hours of daylight.

The nice PR girl from Penguin had also come up from London for the day. She realised before I did that the journalist was in fact locked in the bathroom. The door does not quite shut. Well, it does shut with a protesting shriek but there are no door handles either side. Once we had realised she was effectively locked in, I thought briefly about whether to keep her there, tell her that I was her number one fan and feed her spaghetti through the hole in the door where the shaft of the door handle should be - not forever, just until she wrote and filed the feature.

A Yogi in Full

Tom Wolfe apparently dropped by the New York Stock Exchange - that's like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. Or worse, Future. No wonder the markets have been tanking.

“It has always interested me that the word ‘credit’ comes from the word ‘credere,’ which means ‘to believe,’ ” Mr. Wolfe said. “It only works if people believe in it... [Now] it sounds like even the firms that aren’t in trouble are in trouble.”

Pithy, pithy. I smell a new book, in which Sherman McCoy, former Master of the Universe, liquidates his Park Avenue apartment and rediscovers belief as a yoga teacher. (Preferably at the new Pure on 86th & Lex.)

Who works at CNN anyway?

Ok, this is a typical CNN news article. Reads like an Obama campaign ad. I love the way it mentions the "deceptive McCain ad" in the last paragraph. Just to be clear... Here is the very first sentence:

Barack Obama's decision to forgo public financing for his presidential campaign provides him with the tools needed to implement a "Shock and Awe" television ad strategy designed to paralyze John McCain's campaign, an expert on political TV advertising said in an interview with CNN.

And like its partner in journalistic crime, the WaPo, it legitimizes its one-sided rant with "expert" opinion. Forget about the fact that Obama lied about accepting public financing; lying seems to be a key element of his euphonic speeches.

Obama promised to accept public financing before he knew he could raise more money from donors. Now that he can raise twice as much from donors as Uncle Sam would give him if he forswore private donations, of course he's pursuing the bigger bucks. What's more troubling is Obama's list of flip-flops is so limitless, he's beginning to sound like he tailors his position to whichever audience he's addressing at the moment. When he spoke to an AIPAC meeting a couple of weeks back, he said he supports Israeli control of Jerusalem. The next day, trying to placate angry Arab supporters, Obama said "negotiators" should work out the contentious Jerusalem issue.

Caveat emptor.

Love me, love me not

Fouad Ajami, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, has written a great article about foreigners' low opinion of America. Some excerpts:

The Pew survey tells us that some foreign precincts show a landslide victory for Barack Obama. France leads the pack; fully 84% of those following the American campaign are confident Mr. Obama will do the right thing in foreign policy.

I can see the bumper sticker: Surrender monkeys for Obama.

There is no need to roam distant lands in search of indictments of America's ways. Tales of our demise appear every day in our media. Yes, it is not perfect, this republic of ours. But the possibilities for emancipation and self-improvement it affords are unmatched in other lands.

Especially for women, I suspect. I remain amazed at how many meetings and conferences I go to in Asia and see almost all men.

The great battle over the Iraq war has subsided, and Europeans who ponder the burning grounds of the Islamic world know the distinction between fashionable anti-Americanism and the international order underpinned by American power. George W. Bush may have been indifferent to political protocol, but he held the line when it truly mattered, and the Europeans have come to understand that appeasement of dictators and brigands begets its own troubles.

This is Robert Kagan's point. It sends most journalists into speechless, keyboard pounding rage.

It is one thing to rail against the Pax Americana. But after the pollsters are gone, the truth of our contemporary order of states endures. We live in a world held by American power – and benevolence. Nothing prettier, or more just, looms over the horizon.

Yup.

Green, black - whatever

I think this sort of report about Obama rings true. He's kind of a slime ball in that respect.

This is a very clever bit of rhetoric. For one thing, note how Obama conflates the entirely legitimate concern over his inexperience with prejudice against his race or "funny name." If you vote against him because he's green, you might as well be voting against him because he's black.

But maybe not as slimy as the Washington Post, the slimiest paper in America. Its favorite strategy is to write a damning article on someone or something and support the claim with quotes from... random individuals. So I was amused to read this sentence in the same WSJ article:

To compensate for its lack of statistical evidence, the Post turns to "experts" to lend credibility to its claim of a white-supremacist surge.

Hi, I am Bob, I am an expert on surges in white supremacy, especially those surrounding the Obama campaign as exaggerated by, if not wholly created by, the Washington Post.

Rachel's headache

I had heard that Jewish women weren't that, um... passionate. Specifically, I remember being told by a Jewish friend that "they would be just as happy doing the dishes as doing you". So now look what's happened. The guys are running for the exits, I guess.

Killing and forgetting

Apparently Canadians need to read more Mliosz, or perhaps something like The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (just for fun, here is John Updike's review from 1987), because this sort of thing is creepy. Liberals so caught up in their own forced world view that their feet come right off the ground. Maybe those are even Canadians on the book cover...

PS, I am half Canadian, at least technically.

Peeling paint

Last night I had an evening of... idiosyncrasy. Which brought up this memorable bit from Flow Chart (a book-length poem, btw), which hits a few nails on the head.

O so much God to police everything and still be left over to flatter one's
harmless idiosyncrasies, the things that make us us, which is precisely
what is fading like paint on a sign, no matter how much one pretends
it's the same as yesterday.

John Ashbery, Flow Chart

Distant and severe

The garden shed discussion got me thinking about John Ashberry, which got me thinking about this bit from Flowchart, which I finally found:

...Oh, my dear, I've tried that. But if it interests you
you can browse through this catalog, and who knows, perhaps come up with a solution that will apply
to your complicated case, just conceivably, or perhaps you know someone better informed
in the higher echelons where the view is distant and severe,
the ground blue as steel.

John Ashbery, Flow Chart

Gweilo city

Hong Kong is FULL of westerners. To the unfamiliar, that might sound like an obvious point; trust me, it's not. Traditionally it was basically expat suit types and tourist/back-packer types. Now there are seemingly countless mezzanine layers - artsy/full-time teacher types, pub yob types, Joe and Mary from Toledo types. And they tend to congregate. There was a huge crowd on the Fringe roof last night; I think I saw maybe a handful of Chinese (overseas, of course). Down the street, trendy bar/restaurant/place to be seen Wagyu is populated uniquely by gweilos/gweipos between 30 and 50. In fact, so is most of Hollywood Road. I just passed by the Starbucks in Alexandra House, which is the size of an airplane hangar, and it was packed with westerners - strollers, grand-parents, the gamut. It's weird, because just 12 months ago, there seemed to be a mainland invasion going on.

Then and now, urban version

If you remember NYC in the 1980's, you really must read this. Excerpt number one:

Fear was a New Yorker’s constant companion in the 1970s and ’80s. We lived behind doors with triple locks, some like engines of medieval ironmongery. We barred our ground-floor and fire-escape windows with steel grates that made us feel imprisoned. I was thankful for mine, though, when a hatchet turned up on my fire escape, origin unknown.

Sound familiar? It does to me. No hatchet, but there was (were?) human feces in the vestibule twice. But if that glances off your carapace, here is excerpt number two:

Holding him against the wall with his forearm, speaking “no more than a puma would,” the robber calmly unbuttons his [own] camel’s-hair coat, opens his fly, and displays to Sammler his penis, “a large tan-and-purple uncircumcised thing” like a snake or an elephant’s trunk, along with his “great oval testicles.” “The thing was shown with mystifying certitude” as “a prominent and separate object intended to communicate authority.” Then the thief returns it to his trousers. “Quod erat demonstrandum.” He releases Sammler, “concluding the session, the lesson, the warning, the encounter, the transmission.” No reader of Sammler has ever forgotten this scene, and even the novel’s characters can’t stop talking about it. “Was it sixteen, eighteen inches?” a wide-eyed nephew asks Sammler. “Would you guess it weighed two pounds, three pounds, four?”

How many books discuss penis weight, huh?

*Giuliani did 99% of NYC's clean-up, in return for which he was attacked by the New York Times on an almost daily basis. The paper labeled him a fascist for trying to get rid of the squeegie men and put the homeless in shelters (these people wanted your money, btw, and they were not passive). If the NYT's editorial board ran NYC... shudder.

Not really my kind of princess

Given this site's history of posting about ill-behaved Princesses (or well-behaved, depending on the hat you're wearing), it is with some enthusiasm we note that the City Journal has a piece called Trash Princess. Dirty work, but someone's gotta do it.

Quickly becoming my favorite magazine. Brace yourselves - more to come, no doubt...

Schultz and Kagan

Countries like China are old school; they understand the necessarily close relationship between bark and bite. The OECD countries were more that way 30 years ago than they are now, says my statesman hero, George Schultz. And he is concerned:

So you see strength and diplomacy go together—they’re not alternative ways of going about something.

And why have things changed? My talking head hero, Robert Kagan, has the answer, I believe. And when you have 15 minutes, I suggest you read it here. Short story: Americans are from Venus, Europeans are from Mars.

If this doesn't change, it really will be a Pacific Century.

Winnie the Pooh on the train

Obama's would-be National Security Adviser has cited Winnie the Pooh as a foreign policy influence. I like thinking outside the box, but this won't help Obama's naive image. Comments like this inevitably will surface:

Winnie the Pooh is not the character to emulate if you want a foreign policy that’s more stable than a stuffed bear tied to a helium balloon.

But Danzig's comments about fundamentalists lending themselves to extremism through the very, very low opportunity cost in their lives (read: no education, no job, no skills, no hope) makes sense. George Schultz (infamous neo-con, hisssss) made the same point at a speech I heard in Tokyo a few years ago. Most Americans just don't realize how cheap life is in much of the world.

Even relatively well-off Brits stewing in pubs get this feeling, and they're Brits (...stewing in pubs):

I'm gonna get me a motor car
Maybe a Jaguar
Maybe a plane or a day of fame
I'm gonna be a millionaire
So can you take me there?
Wanna be wild 'cos my life's so tame

Here am I, going nowhere on a train
Here am I, growing older in the rain

Poor Winnie.

April 1954

I am just posting this because I like the cover. No, I am not a subscriber. But it looks good, actually. Your own folding plane?

Tomorrow, no adverbs

At least the Celtics won the championship. That's a good thing. Ok, I am up to one. That's about it, though. Everything else today is a tyranny of Lilliputian idiocies. And yesterday.

First, and most annoyingly, there is this local walking custom in Hong Kong that says once you are a quarter-step in front of another pedestrian, you are allowed to cut right in front of him and stop, slow down to a crawl, whatever, and if the person behind bumps into you, then turn back and look at him like he's unbearably rude.

Second, there is no sense of right of way. If 12 people are walking the same direction along a sidewalk or corridor, and one person suddenly decides to walk at an oblique angle - across everyone's path - basically tripping up each walker one at a time, no problem - you're good.

Keep in mind this is a crowded city with tiny sidewalks. Not like Tokyo or New York, for example, cities with sidewalks to die for, where you can actually walk and think at the same time. Stroll even. Not Hong Kong. Here, the buildings are built practically into the street. "World City" - ha!. More like Landlord City. To protect people from getting run over by "light-good vehicles" (vans from hell) and mini-buses, the wise authorities have lined the tiny strips of sidewalk with metal fences, which reduces the walking space by another eight inches. And then there are the delivery men with the little pushcart things offering all and sundry a 24/7 game of pedestrian chicken. I often end up walking in the street, much to the annoyance of some full-time drivers, who honk at me not because I am in their way, but because they have a right to - and they don't have a right to much, so its a welcome opportunity.

Third, is Ms. J_____ the yoga Ditz, who doesn't plan her classes so leaves you in poses for a minute at a time while she thinks of what to do next. She tries to hide this by babbling about opening every conceivable part of your body "to the sky".

Fourth, I have never seen so much rain. It has been raining every day for 5 weeks. How can Iowa flood? All the rain in the world is here in Hong Kong.

Fifth, I have to write a regular missive. I hate writing "regular" things. There should be a software package for this where I can just choose adjectives from different dictionaries. That reminds me of the beginning of Catch 22 where Yossarian has an editing job and randomly decides to delete adjectives one day and nouns the next.

My kind of princess

I am sure she is amused that this appeared on CNN... There's hope yet for the monarchy.

More sartoria

Is this what "sales exec's" where now? Cool.

I sort of like this look for guys... in the summer... in the city (song?) But not sure about those shoes.

I also like the bottom pic - and don't I recognize the tuck-tuck! Too bad that's all I recognize...

Glide in your stride, dip in your hip

This looks fun. Old images that yet, fresh images beget.

I almost feel like Jack Burden

See what happens when you get on the wrong side of this blog? Bad things happen to you. Tsk tsk. So no surprise it has been a bad week for James Jim Jimmy Johnson, who resigned as head of Obama's VP search campaign. Turns out that Reynolds and Kaus are good hunting dogs...

The WSJ reported yesterday that Johnson had (secretly) received more than $5 million in *special* mortgage loans from lender Countrywide Financial. There were a few special features about the loans, the main one being below-market rates of interest charged. Having now waded through the details a bit, I see it is a story right out of All the Kings Men. I also see why Johnson was a seriously bad choice to pick for anything. Makes you wonder how naive Obama might be. Here is a brief, 4-part summary for any Robert Penn Warren fans:

Part 1 - The Mortgage Distributor
Countrywide is the largest mortgage "distributor" in the US. As a mortgage distributor, it simply provides mortgage loans to home-owners. Specifically, it lends money to a borrower, say Mary Contrary, and collects the various little fees for "originating" the mortgage (fees paid by Contrary); it then sells the mortgage loan (a stack of paper giving the holder the right to receive 30 years of monthly payments from Mary Contrary) to a third party and uses the money received from the sale to make a new mortgage, collect the fees again, sell that loan, collect the money, and so on.

Part 2 - The Mortgage Buyer
So who is the third party buying these mortgages from Countrywide? Usually it's Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association), an entity created by Franklin Roosevelt during the depression to help boost the housing market. Fannie Mae's purpose is to make sure distributors like Countrywide have enough money ("liquidity") to make mortgage loans to prospective house buyers. If Countrywide couldn't sell its loans to Fannie Mae, it could only make one set of loans before it ran out of money and would have to wait 30 years to get all the money back (well, technically maybe like 15). By selling all the loans to Fannie Mae up front, it can keep lending again and again, and the public can always find a loan. If Fannie Mae stopped buying loans from Countrywide, the mortgage market would grind to a halt and the housing market would tank (which is basically what has been happening with the "sub-prime" fiasco - a related if different story).

Part 3a - Johnson was the CEO of Fannie Mae
It turns out that a) Johnson is the former CEO of Fannie Mae, and he was the CEO when he got the discount loans from Countrywide. That is an obvious conflict of interest, because as the CEO of Fannie Mae, he may have shown some favorable bias towards Countrywide, which could have resulted in his acting unethically (read: accounting fraud), as he was benefiting personally from Countrywide's largess. While there is too much smoke in the story to summarize it all, the part I remember best is that Fannie Mae's public disclosure documents for 1999 reported Johnson's 1998 compensation at $7 million, while it later turned out that his actual compensation for 1998 was just under $21 million. Regardless of whether or not any of the extra $14 million was related to Countrywide, it gets the imagination working on what "largess" means in this context.

Part 3b - He never told anyone
And b) he never disclosed the loans to anyone. When Fannie Mae was grilled by regulators in 2004 following its $10 billion accounting scandal, Johnson (by then the former CEO) was put through a disclosure meat-grinder. Yet somehow he never disclosed his $5 million of personal, below-market rate loans from Countrywide, his biggest customer.

Part 4 - Friends of Angelo (WTF?)

A Democratic power broker who remains a paid consultant to Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson was a major beneficiary of a Countrywide program known as "Friends of Angelo," which arranged loans for friends of [Countrywide] Chairman and Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo at attractive rates.

Today's WSJ

Not fit to print?

Is Iraq turning the corner? News that you won't read in the New York Times, The Washington Post or the LA Times and that you will never hear on CNN or NPR.

Yes, we have heard this before. But I think this surge thing is working. John McCain agrees. Barack Obama does not. What do you think?

By the way, the link is to Dean's World, blog Utopia:

We believe we have the best comments sections in the world; while many thousands of people visit Dean’s World every day, fewer than 1% comment because we run a pretty tight ship: we do require registration, and people who engage in abusive behavior are often asked to leave.

Remember, it’s Dean’s World baby, you’re just visiting it.

Same at Call of the Particular. If we eased our standards, there's no telling what would happen. But certainly it would be dangerous.

Story poached from Instapundit :-)

Obama's VP search

Since my first Obama post attracted so many comments, I thought I would post a follow-up.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and Slate's Mickey Kaus tag-team to make an early call on "a pattern of bad judgment", thanks to Obama's selection of insider Jim Johnson to vet his VP choices. Hmm. Kaus is a democrat, by the way. I think you have to be to write for Slate. Hehe.

The National Review agrees that the Jim Johnson choice was questionable.

Basketball diaries

I should write something about the Celtics' squeaker in game two of the NBA finals, which I watched happily in the Foreign Correspondents' Club at 10:00 Monday morning, a lone fan cheering idiotically at an empty bar. Game 3 tomorrow morning - I already feel like a regular. But instead I will suggest you read a very funny blog by Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who a) writes a blog, and b) was court-side in games one and two:

One thing I did learn [watching the game] was that in addition to not having one ounce of athletic ability, being white, and having no vertical, and only being able to dribble right handed, I couldn’t play in the NBA because about 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I’ve seen it the guy on the receiving end usually doesn’t respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, schooling the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.

If you make it down to his comments on Kobe Bryant, you may find it hard not to conclude that Bryant is an exceptionally talented ball player and an exceptional prick otherwise.

Back to black

I am pretty much fascinated by Amy Winehouse (which I realize does not sound an original comment). I am listening to Back to Black as I write, which is the first really good CD I have bought in years (yes, I still buy CD's - but now you can listen to them first, which is a step forward). Until about three months ago I had heard the name, but it meant nothing to me - maybe vague associations with fleeting media celebrity, a flavor of the month somewhere, in something. Then I saw a video while in line at the HMV - a diminutive white woman in a cocktail dress circa 1963 with about 30 pounds of hair piled vertically above her head, accompanied by two black guys in Dragnet suits and fedoras doing a funky two step, arms awindmill and sweat pouring down their faces. I almost expected them to run off stage and come back on in black-face. The singer, oblivious to the dancers three feet away, wore a demeanor of liminal insouciance as she made dainty little lady steps from side to side. Even with the sound off, you could tell there was a disconnect between the Betty Boop appearance and whatever the music was.

Sure enough - starting with the lyrics. From Me & Mr. Jones, for example: "What kind of fuckery are we? These days you don't mean dick to me." Okay, she's got street cred. I love rhymes like that. Reminds me of a line from Eminem: Let's get down to business, don't mess around what is this?" (What happened to him, btw?). Another line for which I have a soft spot, from Tears Dry on their Own: "I should be my own best friend and not fuck myself in the head with 'superman'... "). Hmm... maybe you have to hear it.

But besides being an oddly gifted singer, she's also a gifted songwriter. Her's is the first new pop sound since I don't know what. When I first heard Back to Black I immediately liked two or three of the 10 songs. Two months later, I love all of them. I won't blabber on about her style, jazz background, etc., because I took Music Appreciation pass/fail, which was nearly disastrous.

And then there is the elephant in the living room. The Attitude. Actually, there are two, I would say, the musical one and the Other Really Big Fucked Up One. On the former, I thought Bob Dylan was the only Jew with soul (check out Where Are You Tonight on "Street Legal"), but apparently there are two. On the second, well, she will probably be long dead before she approaches Dylan's stature. I will skip the barbs and the moralizing - from what I have seen (and there's a lot to see on YouTube) she acts by pure instinct with apparently little reflection (which is largely but not uniquely from the fact that she is a junkie). She seems the type of creature who belongs in a Robinson Jeffers poem - spare and spartan, more a wounded bird of prey than a person. I suspect her last words will be fuck off.

[Despite the retro-motown feel of the music and tours, the title track of "Back to Black" is about the singer's return to depression after a break-up - "You go back to her and I go back to black".]

Boutique critique

I saw Sex and the City over the weekend. Actually I saw three-quarters of it, before I left for a bar.

I have seen the series four or five times, have read several media comments about it, have been aware of SJP's rise to fame, even saw it being filmed on West Broadway once. I like the dresses, having dated (as we said, and they still do) girls from Mobile and Atlanta in college. And yet, a mystery. Please tell me this is not about women-who-want-to-act-like-they-think-men-act. But it sort of seems that way.

Of the four (?) main characters, two have stereotypical male roles - the slut (male equivalent: horn dog) and the workaholic/bitch - no, I don't subscribe to her persecuted professional woman cover (male equivalent: prick). The third is a stereotypical Hollins grad and the last is the apotheosis of urban womanhood as viewed by the American male (female?) circa 2000. Basically, three characters who serve as foils to amplify the fourth's various relative virtues.

But the heroine can't carry the plot on her own, because she's too limited - she's a moon, always reflecting another's light, whether harsh or soft. She needs her simple simon friends around in order to shine. Only problem with that, for me, is that two of the friends are revolting and the third is absurdly saccharine. For what its worth, the male leads are just as papier-mache.

Some S&tC pundits say plot and character are all a red herring and that the series (and film?) is all about fashion, brands and the latest on-location restaurant shooting. Carrie couldn't have suggested better.

But I'll take a Hong Kong boutique any day.

Yoga story, the sequel

Okay, now that I have calmly and reflectively introduced yoga as a topic, perhaps I can get down to business on this little pop phenomenon. Starting with:

Challenge #1:
How not to scream at your 20-something teacher from Vancouver to shut up as he/she wallows in the treacle of his/her own burbling idiocy.

Having reflected on this now countless times as I sat (stood? leaned? arced?) in downward dog, mumbling voodoo curses under my breath, I can suggest two classes of verbal yoga offense (VYO).

The first and most common (as in, running stream starting when you enter the room) is Semantic. While examples are as numerous as they are egregious, here are a few favorites: exhale your breath, lower down your arms, make your feet parallel - like the number 11, paint your nose across the ceiling. You may think those minor transgressions, and in isolation perhaps they are (not).

But they frequently precede the second class of offense, which is far more grave: faux spiritual twattle from a 26-year old. This starts with congratulating everybody for having the wisdom, and having made the sacrifice, to come to the class. Right. It then moves on to searching deeply within ourselves to "set an intention for the class", whatever that might mean. Notwithstanding the fact that this intention "can be anything at all," it is meant to have some deep significance. Usually the significance manifests itself by the teacher using its mention as an excuse to rattle off some self-satisfied pabulum about our collective presence in his/her class making the world a better, kinder, safer place. Which he/she really seems to believe. At which point I begin to fantasize about strangling the twit with my towel, which would quiet the room and disprove the twattle-thesis in one go. There is something cleansing about the thought, and I move into plank pose at relative peace.

Ok, I feel better. .. And they're nice people. And they mean well. Shame they're so stupid and self-satisfied.

Milosz #2

Here is Seamus Heaney's eulogy and review of the life and work of Csezlav Milosz, which everyone ought to read at some point. I say "life and work" rather than just work, because unlike so many other literary luminaries, like Wallace Stevens or a host of others, Milosz's life was exemplary. No doubt because early on he had something more to face off against than ennui and metaphor.

One of my favorite Milosz poems, "Capri", contains a line in which the poet refers to the importance of heeding "the immense call of the particular". Worth a try, I've thought. Max Weber also wrote about heeding a calling, which now of course seems out-dated. Well, be patient.

I first read a Milosz poem while sitting on a New York City subway, heading downtown. It was posted up on the side of the train car, near the ceiling, sort of sandwiched between ads for laser surgery and legal advice.

Milosz #1

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

Wilno, 1936

-Czeslaw Milosz from "The Collected Poems 1931-1987", 1988

O bumma

I think people like Obama because he is the opposite of what they dislike. Bush is widely held to be the worst communicator ever seen in high office, which is an understandable conviction. Obama's melodious tone and soft, inclusive words are euphony writ large. Bush; anti-Bush. But that's exactly what the Brits did when they elected Gordon Brown. They danced on Tony Blair's grave, chanting Brown's name (as flames and ashes swirled about their heads) anointing the anti-Blair. Now they hate Brown even more than they hated Blair. Apparently being a non-entity is a good way to get elected, but a bad way to govern.

I am not a wonk on the candidates' policy platforms, but the bit I have read about Obama's makes me squirm. In fact Obama himself is a bit squirm-worthy. The guy has never worked in business (never had a conventional job as far as I can tell in Wikipedia, unless this qualifies), never been anywhere near the military (which is fine, but noteworthy on an otherwise long list of nevers), never been to Iraq (has, in fact, been dismissive of going to Iraq), never distinguished himself in his brief political career, is seemingly against free trade, has a long history of attending a church that is well outside the mainstream, and has a congressional voting record that is more liberal than any democratic presidential nominee since the 1960's. Goodbye euphony, hello cacophony.

As for being a pillar of hope for black Americans, a unifying force of something and something, etc., etc - why don't more people think like this?

Maybe what it boils down to is: with the world changing so rapidly, with China, India and Russia becoming so much more powerful, America will have a lot of challenges in the next several years - economic, military, social, pretty much the gauntlet, I suspect. Should the next president of the United States have a professional background in non-profit consumer advocacy?

Yoga story

I vaguely remember my mother doing yoga when I was about seven. It seemed to be in between her PTA meetings. She had a friend who came over in the afternoon and they talked in the kitchen and the friend smoked. My neighbor John Bolger and I stole some cigarettes once and smoked them in the yard by the swings. Mom and Dad had cocktail parties some evenings, and Dad would say, "Hi Bob! What can I getcha?" and Bob would say "Scocthansoda" or "Vodkamartini". I would draw conclusions accordingly - scotch drinkers were favored because it sounded like butterscotch; "martini" was a suspicious word. This holds true today. At any rate, my mother did yoga (before abdicating it in full); so in my yoga classes now, I can't help but look at the 30-somethings around me as potential stand-ins for my mother in between her PTA meetings. They are the same age, have the same issues - they are identical, for all intents and purposes. The difference is in me, and my perspective. I have become that distant image I once viewed from afar.

Now that might be entertainment

I have come to the following conclusion regarding children, adults and entertainment: single adults take their entertainment way too seriously. This is purely anecdotal, but it appears to be a law of life. If you have kids, try to recall the last time you discussed a sitcom or even movie with one of your single friends. For me, I have to go as far back as my yoga class during lunch time. Here's the conversation:

Guy in locker room (opening locker): How was the weekend?
Me (opening locker): Good.
Guy: Wadja do?
Me: Not much. Went to see Indiana Jones with my daughter. Have you seen it? It's good - pretty funny.
Guy: (Scoffs) Dude, those are all the same - freakin' Harrison Ford. The scenes with the rocks, the sword fights, you've seen one you've seen them all. Snakes, same shit.

My friend actually seemed a bit ruffled that I had seen the movie, or at least that I had mentioned it to him. Lighten up, big boy. I agree that all of the Indiana Jones movies are pretty much the same (or at least the two I have seen). So are John Wayne movies, Audrey Hepburn movies and Bruce Willis movies (I have actually only seen one, but I think I'm safe here) - that's the point. In the case of Indiana Jones, it's a kids' movie, and my 11-year old had a two-hour giggling fit, punctuated by staccato cringes and the occasional bout of eye covering. I liked the movie because I liked watching my daughter like it (okay, the Cate Blanchett character was funny and the ant scene was disgusting). The mistake I made was in assuming that other adults would share my perspective on the movie as just a kids' movie.

But come on, Indiana Jones is for kids, right? Adults don't watch stuff like that on their own... Right? The latest City Journal might disagree. Brave New World meets Homer Simpson...

The Great Sleep

"Meanwhile, Jack leaves his job and falls into a period of idleness he calls a 'Great Sleep'...

This taken from some internet study guide to the All the King's Men. I have always been intrigued by Jack Burden's period of idleness. It seems I have my own from time to time. You only know it when you wake up.