More Reinforcements
That old curmudgeon Jack Cafferty over at CNN has thrown his weight behind the legalization argument.
What do you suppose the total price tag is for this failed war on drugs? One senior Harvard economist estimates we spend $44 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. He says if they were legal, governments would realize about $33 billion a year in tax revenue. Net swing of $77 billion. Could we use that money today for something else? You bet your ass we could. Plus the cartels would be out of business. Instantly. Goodbye crime and violence. If drugs were legalized, we could empty out a lot of our prison cells. People will use this stuff whether it’s legal or not. Just like they do booze. And you could make the argument that in some cases alcohol is just as dangerous as some drugs.
While his conclusions are a bit fairy tale, I certainly embrace the crux of his argument.
Random Japan – Jobs Edition
One thing I’ve come to notice as I walk the streets of Tokyo is that cars leaving garages are given priority over those cars already on the street. The man pictured adjusting his hat above – decked out in full uniform that includes a tie and white gloves – is responsible for guiding cars into and out of the parking garage at the base of our apartment building. He doesn’t guide cars to specific parking spots or anything like that (in fact, there are no “spots” since cars slide onto a platform that robotically tucks the car away somewhere). Rather, he just helps with the entry and exit. His job consists of waiting for a car to approach the mouth of the garage, at which point he runs into the opposite side of the street so that he can wave the turning car into the parking complex. For cars leaving the garage, he jumps into the street to block any oncoming traffic so the car can make a smooth exit without having to wait for traffic to ease up before leaving. That’s what he does all day long, rain or shine. The funny part is that the street in front of him isn’t even remotely busy. These “turning into/out of parking lot attendants” can be found all over Tokyo.
Slaying Glenn Beck
Fresh off a recent NY Times profile of the madman himself, the Daily Beast ran a wonderfully-humorous piece on Glenn Beck today that is well worth the time. It’s a sarcastic take on Beck’s super cheesy “nine principles/twelve values” stunt. Man, that guy’s a goof. The reason his ratings remain so strong has gotta be because there are so many people like me who simply can’t turn away from the train wreck that is his show.
An Ironic Moment
I enjoyed a wonderful moment of irony today. During a rather lazy Sunday afternoon, I lied on the couch with Hurley (Lizzi was at yoga) reading a book called Irreligion while listening to There Will Be A Light, a collaboration between Ben Harper and The Blind Boys of Alabama. The irony being that I was reading a book about the nonexistence of God while listening to a gospel album (and a great one at that).
For those of you so inclined, Irreligion is a brief philosophical treatment of the arguments against the existence of God, told from the sometimes circuitous point of a view of a mathematician (John Allen Paulos). It’s a worthwhile read, largely because it’s short (145 pages) and it helps put some meat on arguments that appeal to logic when it comes to debating religion. Being able to throw out words like “anthropic” and “ontological” will undoubtedly help render your opponent verbally impotent in any such debate. Here’s one quote (of serveral) that stuck with me:
Oddly, the fact that we and all life have evolved from simpler forms by natural selection disturbs fundamentalists who are completely unfazed by the biblical claim that we come from dirt.
Side note – I was also sipping a very tasty pinot noir from Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. In addition to satisfying the taste buds, the wine met two important criteria for me: 1) it was reasonably priced; and 2) it had a really cool name. The winery is called Sileni, which got its name from the wise and loyal companions of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. The Sileni were said to have loved celebrating good food, good wine and good company. Here, here!
Rejoice!
For those of us looking for something to brighten the mood in these dreary times:
- Friday Night Lights has been given the green light for an extra two seasons.
- David Simon, creator of The Wire, has just begun work on a new HBO series called Treme, named after the New Orleans neighborhood known for its rich musical history. If he did to New Orleans what he did to Baltimore, this show will be magical.
- Lindsay Lohan’s latest movie, Labor Pains, is skipping the silver screen and heading straight to cable.
- Evolution’s “weaknesses” will not be taught as part of the standard curriculum in Texas schools.
- Japan has vowed to destroy any missile launched from North Korea that decides to enter Japanese airspace. Whew!
Accountability Addendum
Following on my accountability post from the other day, Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece in a similar vein in yesterday’s NY Times. I can only assume that he is an avid reader of this blog.
Taking A Dive
This woman’s performance puts soccer’s finest to shame.
Daniel Hannan
Note to self – never attempt to engage Daniel Hannan in a debate.
The above clip shows Mr. Hannan (a British politician and Member of the European Parliament) dressing down British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Since my religion involves anything having to do with free market capitalism and fiscal responsibility, I say amen to Mr. Hannan! I wish we had that type of articulate and probing thought challenging the powers that be in DC. Instead, we’re stuck with a bunch of mumblefucks who are incapable of intellectual honesty, concerned only with whatever scores them the most political points with their constituencies, principles be damned. Looks like us fiscal conservatives have to look across the pond for our inspiration these days. Perhaps Mr. Hannan is our new flagbearer? At the very least, he may be worth following, something made easier by the fact that he’s got his own blog.
Hitting The Links
- Tim Tebow’s “I Promise” speech has been engraved on a plaque outside of the Gators’ new football facility. The dude’s a helluva player and all, but you’d think they’d at least wait until he graduated before they started to build shrines in his honor (a statue is undoubtedly soon to follow). Just a matter of time before all the Tebow love goes the way of Chuck Norris.
- Meanwhile, it’s late March and the Dukies are still alive, which can only mean one thing: Dickie V is feeling frisky.
- Woody Allen recently channeled his inner crustacean to write a Bernie Madoff revenge piece for The New Yorker. Tails of Manhattan tells the story of two Madoff investors who died and were reincarnated as lobsters, only to find themselves on the verge of being dipped in butter by the swindler himself during a visit to a local eatery. Appalled by the situation’s karmic absurdity, the enterprising lobsters take matters into their own claws.
- I love Vanity Fair. Great writing (mostly). And this.
- I’ve come across some fantastic gift ideas lately, including: this, this, and this.
- According to our friends at The Onion, it sounds like God is contemplating replacing us humans with another species. I suspect he’ll have better luck the next go-round.
- Robert Wright, a fiercely intelligent and diligent author, has spent the better part of the past ten years writing a new book. Due to be released in June, The Evolution of God will surely makes its way onto my eReader (or, if Lizzi lets me, my Kindle). I read Wright’s Nonzero while traversing Germany during the 2006 World Cup and it was fantastic (the book, not the Cup…the U.S. squad laid an egg and I’ve never sweated so much in my life). While I don’t necessarily agree with some of the conclusions he draws in his work, the journey is the reward. For a taste of his upcoming book, check out his piece over at The Atlantic.
- Speaking of favored authors and upcoming books, rumor has it that Dan Brown has just finished his book on the freemasons called The Solomon Key. Can’t wait for that guilty pleasure. Plus, Jon Krakauer has a book about Pat Tillman coming out in September.
- Portfolio recently ran an interesting piece about Dr. Doom himself, Nouriel Roubini. Turns out he’s quite the man about town. And he’s got art resembling female genitalia adorning his walls at home. Who woulda thunk it?
- Worried about your dwindling 401k and being underwater on your house? Don’t bother. Blasts of plasma from a solar storm will help put your current worries into proper context.
Boob Tube Musings
Just so you know, Friday Night Lights is the best show on television. Hands down. It is excellent in every respect and a sure winner with audiences of all stripes. Because of its honest treatment of real-life scenarios and its breadth of subject matter, it appeals to damn near every demographic. I just love the tone and texture of the show. And the music is perfect (mostly Explosions in the Sky).
Another show worth watching is Damages. It’s a whodunnit mystery/legal drama that benefits from solid writing, great directing, and a fantastic cast that includes Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Timothy Olyphant, William Hurt, Ted Danson, Tate Donovan, and Marcia Gay Harden. It’s even got at least three dudes from one of my all-time favorite shows, The Wire.
On the comedy side, there isn’t much better on the tube these days than 30 Rock. Absolutely superb writing and impeccable timing/delivery by the cast, led by the brilliant Alec Baldwin and the occasional big name cameo. Really top-notch comedy.
Not too far behind is the American version of The Office. Like a fine wine, the show gets better with age.
On Accountability And Judgment
Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor, Lawrence Summers, is quite possibly the most boring speaker on the planet. Though we’re told repeatedly that he’s got a magnificent mind, he is excruciating to listen to and should probably be prohibited from ever speaking in public. One obvious problem with Summers (as I mentioned in a previous post) is that the man is scary good at talking without saying anything. In an arena full of legitimate contenders (that being the world of politics), Summers may very well take the cake when it comes to achieving the lowest signal-to-noise ratio. Pouring salt on the wound, the guy speaks in a stodgy monotone that should be bottled and sold as an insomnia drug. As Anderson Cooper of CNN recently joked:
Larry Summers is maybe great behind closed doors, but he’s not about to get his own cable news show.
Despite his vapidity, Summers is back making the rounds as part of the Obama administration’s haphazard attempt to address the current global financial crisis. For those of you who are gluttons for punishment, or in need of some help falling asleep, I encourage you to watch his appearance on Face The Nation this past weekend. It illustrates perfectly the aforementioned gripes.
Beyond Summers’ painful inability to engage his audience, he comes off as a bit aloof and out-of-touch when he speaks, which makes him appear downright unlikeable. (This was something that the NY Times’ Frank Rich addressed in his latest piece, which asked if Obama’s Katrina moment had arrived.) Soured on his personality, I got to thinking…and a bit of a brainstormed developed.
Let’s go back to this notion that the man has a brain to rival all brains. How much does that really matter? I mean, I assume the guy is what we’d call book smart. A sober review of his CV would easily confirm that. But I wonder if something is missing. Maybe the guy, despite all his “intelligence”, is actually an ineffective (and possibly bad) advisor. After all, being smart doesn’t necessarily make you good at what you do. There’s that elusive “judgment” component that is just as important in dictating success or failure as more traditional metrics (eg education).
And when it comes to judgment, my sense is that Summers’ record may very well be mediocre. Of course, we all remember his Freudian slip that played a prominent role in his ouster as president of Harvard. And lest we forget that Summers, along with his cohorts forming the economic triumvirate that surrounded President Clinton – Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan – actually helped set the stage for the financial quagmire in which we currently find ourselves. Referred to as The Three Marketeers by Time magazine back in 1999, the group helped engineer an irresponsibly loose monetary policy following the bursting of the tech bubble, which led to some really stupid risk-taking by businesses and consumers alike. Those easy money policies caused risk to be massively mispriced and we’re now dealing with the consequences of having the pendulum swing to the completely opposite side of the spectrum. The group also helped push through legislation that required banks to extend loans that they wouldn’t normally make. Specifically, as part of Clinton’s desire to increase the rate of home ownership across the country, the Community Reinvestment Act was massaged on multiple occasions to encourage banks to make loans to borrowers who would normally be considered too risky to lend to. With various government incentives and assurances in hand – and by devising ways to lessen (and even monetize) those heightened risks via securitization – banks obliged. What resulted was an explosion in irresponsible borrowing and lending, and a real estate bubble whose burst served as the primary catalyst for the current downturn. And for those of you who subscribe to the theory that this whole thing is a result of insufficient regulation, recall that Summers played an instrumental role in the passing of the Financial Services Modernization Act. Among other things, the act allowed for the creation of institutions we now deem too big to fail.
I’m not suggesting that Summers should bear all or even the majority of the responsibility for our current doldrums. Indeed, there is plenty of blame to go around. But he deserves at least some of the blame. After all, I’m sure he was at the very least present in the room when various of those misguided government initiatives were being discussed. More likely, knowing him to be the overbearing type, my guess is he was actively engaged in many of those discussions. So this begs the question – why does he have his current job? Why is it that we rarely see people held accountable for their professional mistakes? And why are so many people with spotty track records continuously afforded the benefit of the doubt? We see this all the time in professional sports, where players and coaches who underperform at one place get bounced around to a host of others before finally being put to pasture, as if a change in venue was all they needed. We also see this when it comes to the talking heads on ESPN, whose record at picking the outcomes of various games appears to be immaterial in the grand scheme. This is even more evident (and meaningful) in the financial marketplace, where prognosticators like Jim Cramer manage to stay on air (or in print) despite consistently getting things wrong (quick – name one economist or market watcher not named Roubini or Faber who correctly predicted this downturn). As the WSJ smartly put it recently, financial journalists fail upward:
If the world of financial infotainment can itself be described as a “market,” it is a market where accountability does not seem to exist, where the heaviest of incentives seems to carry no weight, and where consumers, to judge by what they get, seem constantly to choose the lousy over the good. The old order discredits itself, but the old order persists nevertheless…The reasons the financial-entertainment biz failed us are many and complex, but they ultimately come down to this: In the marketplace to describe the marketplace itself, there is precious little competition. There is a single, standard product that comes in packaging that is alternately sultry, energetic or fun — bitter, brainy or Cramer “crazy” — but which rarely strays beyond certain ideological boundaries. Adversarial voices are few. Criticism is sacrificed for access. Advice sometimes shades over into simple propaganda. Even the worst prognosticators sometimes go on to jobs with presidential campaigns or prominent think tanks.
Not to belabor the point, but consider the case of embattled Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. I can’t help but feel for the guy…obviously plenty smart and capable, the dude’s been dealt a pretty shitty hand. But it’s not all about bad luck. Let’s not forget that prior to his current gig, Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (since 2003), which not only put him in the cockpit with Greenspan (and then Bernanke) but also made him vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (the principal organ of our nation’s monetary policy). Thusly, he was knee-deep in the muck in the lead-up to the current crisis. And so his reward for such complicity is being made king of the castle? Really? A sporting analogy I like to use for this comes from the gridiron: My football team had a bad year last year, which was largely the result of the defense being a sieve rather than the offense not producing; indeed, the offense was lights-out. In response, my misguided owner (let’s call him Jerry) fired the head coach and promoted the defensive coordinator to the top job. Huh? Seriously?
I’ll never understand why we always rely on the very people who helped get us into our various messes to then get us out of them. Rather than hold them accountable for their lapses in judgment, we give them increasingly greater powers of authority. I can understand needing to have people who know where the bodies are buried but that is only justifiable up to a point. As they say in Texas, “that dog don’t hunt!”
Slice Of Awesome
I love the guy clapping on the left. Reminds me of GOB.
WTF?
A man at Tokyo’s main train station pushed a 60-year old woman onto the tracks as a train approached the other day. Luckily, the woman managed to avoid the oncoming train and only suffered minor head injuries. When questioned by the police, the man indicated that he pushed the woman, whom he did not know, because he “wanted to die and hoped to be executed”. I’ll let you connect the break in logic there.
Failed Policies And Failed Brains
I had the pleasure of watching Stephen Baldwin debate Ron Paul on the topic of marijuana legalization while waiting in an airport lounge in Singapore recently. On the pro-legalization side was Senator Paul, a staunch libertarian and defender of most individual liberties (he’s pro-life due to his firsthand experiences as an obstetrician; you can read more in his thoughtful book, The Revolution: A Manifesto). On the anti-legalization side was Mr. Baldwin (a former actor best known as Alec Baldwin’s brother). Naturally, Baldwin’s arguments were largely ripped to shreds by the verbose (but correct) Paul. A born-again Christian, Baldwin attempted to “bring a faith-based, conservative perspective to [the] issue”. Coming from that angle, it should come as no surprise that Baldwin made little sense while attempting to decry all things cannabis, starting off with a wonderfully-ignorant statement that “…it’s a very simple reality: marijuana leads to doing worse things. It’s just a fact, I don’t care what anyone says, what the debate is. When you smoke marijuana at a young age it will usually lead to alcohol abuse and hard drugs.” Of course, there is plenty debate around this topic, making it anything but “a simple reality”. But why would any self-respecting Evangelical want to pay attention to reasonable objections based on rational thought?
In related news, The Economist recently ran a fantastic piece arguing for drug legalization that I highly recommend.
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs…
The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars….far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters.
Meghan McCain
Saw Meghan McCain on Larry King last night and you can color me impressed. She came off as thoughtful, well-spoken and down-to-earth. And she’s a moderate – socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Fan.
Yosh!
Caught the exciting finish to the World Baseball Classic today, which saw Japan defeat its archrival South Korea 5-3 in extra innings (no love lost between these two countries given their history). I watched along with some of my Japanese colleagues, each of whom expressed more emotion in the course of an hour than I’ve seen over the past 2.5 years combined. Every solid play by the Japanese was greeted with a dramatic “yoshhhhhhhhhhhh!”, which sounded like a mix of Homer Simpson’s trademark “doh!”, someone being surprised with a playful jab to the stomach, and moviegoers asking their talkative neighbors to “shush”. Turns out “yosh” is the fun-times equivalent of “good”.
In any event, I’m happy for my adopted homeland. Let’s be honest, the Japanese could use every bit of good news they can muster these days. So while the economy sinks into oblivion and the ruling political class continues to explore new depths of ineptitude, at least Japan can take solace in the notion that its baseball is the best the world has to offer.
Back In The Saddle
Following about two weeks on the road, I’ve now returned home to Tokyo and am comfortably back in the blogging saddle. And I’m gonna welcome myself back with a few random thoughts:
- Lizzi and I have decided that we should start employing a television crew to follow us around and document our experiences with taxi drivers. I assure you that it would make for fun viewing, as we inevitably encounter strange and/or frustrating situations when we’re ferried about various cities in Asia. By the way, Aussie cabbies are nuts. Surprisingly, many of them either have a difficult time understanding what we say (to be fair, many are not native English speakers) or get easily confused and/or disoriented when it comes to direction. And they love putting the pedal to the metal, even when there is a ridiculously small amount of space between them and the next car. Five feet of space? Gun it! Then slam on the brakes! Woohoo! The continuous and violent jerking that results from all the stopping and starting inevitably leads to me getting car sick, causing me to break into a cold sweat as I fight the urge to puke all over Lizzi’s shoes. Plus, during one of our trips last week, we had a massively overweight guy driving us back to our hotel from Bondi Beach who kept falling asleep at the wheel. The dude would nod as he drove and would be out cold when we’d be waiting at stop lights. Good thing the traffic sucked (lots of cars in Sydney since the city doesn’t have much of a train system) so he was never able to muster too much speed.
- I read two good pieces in The New Yorker during our flight yesterday. One about the crooked banker Robert Allen Stanford, the other about the life and death of David Foster Wallace. Both worthwhile. This reminded me of how much I love that magazine, which makes me want to abandon my relatively new Sony eReader for the Kindle 2 so that I can electronically subscribe. But then I remember that spending $359 on a luxury that is somewhat redundant wouldn’t be the most responsible move in this environment.
- When Glenn Beck refers to the media, why does he say “they”? Has he managed to convince himself that he doesn’t host his own TV show on Fox News? And that he doesn’t also have his own radio show – and run his own magazine? That’s a trifecta of media penetration, Glenn, making you a full-fledged member of the “they” you routinely seek to demonize.
- Isn’t the U.S. supposed to dominate in baseball?
- Saw a couple movies during flights recently: W, Quantum of Solace, and The Wrestler. I found each of them decent, not great. My thoughts on them relate more to the casting rather than the stories themselves. For W, Josh Brolin and Thandie Newton were superb in their respective roles as George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Richard Dreyfus as Dick Cheney, on the other hand, pretty much sucked. For Quantum, though I found the movie kinda so-so in plot and directing, Daniel Craig solidified himself as a great choice to play the role of Bond. For Wrestler, while I appreciate the film on balance, I was left a bit empty by Mickey Rourke’s much-ballyhooed turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson. He was obviously good but I just didn’t think he was all that great, which is what the hype had me expecting. This might be for the same reason that I’m consistently underwhelmed by the performances of Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood in their films – they always seem to be playing the same person, which often times doesn’t appear to deviate much from their own characters in real life. I think people fell in love with Rourke’s performance because of the obvious parallels with his life offscreen, which is precisely the problem I have with his role – it was just him being him.
- It’s amazing how bad I am at fantasy sports and at predicting the outcomes of sporting events. The latest example of my failure in this area was my March Madness tourney bracket. After getting off to a smashing start by posting just one loss on day one, I proceeded to completely flame out on day two. This was thanks mostly to the early exit of W. Virginia, which I had pegged for the Final Four. A contrarian call (to say the least), this was part of my strategy to go long experienced coaching, thinking Bob Huggins would rally his Mountaineers and shock the sporting world. Instead, I simply received confirmation of my general suckitude.
Heaven On Earth
You’ll have to excuse the break in posts this week. We’ve been a bit preoccupied with falling in love with Sydney, which will inevitably be called home someday (that’s our new mission). Today was yet another beautiful day in the city, topped off by a wonderful dinner at North Bondi Italian, which we enjoyed after taking a scenic walk from Bronte Beach. Tonight’s dinner followed an equally scrumptious one the night before at Sean’s Panorama, which is also located in North Bondi. I don’t really have the words to describe this place. It’s quite possibly heaven on earth. Just watching the life around us at dinner was enough to make us contemplate “missing” our flight home on Saturday. Perfect weather, good beer, great attitudes, solid food, people out running and exercising, a super cute little boy playing soccer with his dad, even cuter kids playing in the surf, and dogs running around off their leashes while their owners trailed nonchalantly behind. We just can’t get enough of this place.
Slice Of Awesome
This is why I’m deathly afraid of cats. The fun begins around the 0:35 mark.
Another Reason To Love Sydney
Full frontal nudity on basic cable. We’re watching that show about Hugh Hefner’s Playboy girlfriends on E and nothing is blurred out. Now all the girls are sliding down a new slip-and-slide. Hehe. Love it.
Bathers’ Pavilion
Lizzi and I had dinner with a friend tonight at a wonderful place called Bathers’ Pavilion in Sydney. In addition to offering a great wine list and very tasty food, the location is superb. The restaurant is located on Balmoral Beach overlooking Middle Harbour. The views at sunset are stunning. Seeing the light hit some of the cliffs across the bay is a beautiful sight indeed. Quite possibly the best setting I’ve ever seen for a restaurant. Man o man. I love Sydney.
On our way home, we passed an Anglican Church whose sign read the following:
Too much open-mindedness can cause your brains to fall out.
What a lovely sales pitch. Be narrow-minded so that you can’t be swayed by any other facts or evidence contrary to what we preach. That’s fantastic.
What The Beck?
In the latest installment of my newly-named series “What the Beck?” – where I have fun pointing out the wonderful unintentional comedy provided by Fox News’ Glenn Beck – I’ve included yet another clip of the man crying on air. This one is from his special Friday episode focusing on his “We Surround Them” crusade and the related “9/12 Project”. Things start to get fun at the 1:00 mark and climax around 2:50.
He is such a pud. The rest of his show on Friday followed the usual Beck format – lots of self-righteousness indignation directed towards the evil “them” punctuated by heart-warming stories of how America has the potential to be great again. And, of course, plenty of instances where insanity combined with blissful ignorance to provide a wonderful – and depressing – display of how f*&ked we all are in the long run if these people end up surrounding anyone. And, since no conservative rally would be complete without it, Chuck Norris made his obligatory appearance, smiling cheesily for the cameras before treating the crowd to an exciting demonstration of pinky pushups and then using a chest hair to rope a steer.
Beck also had Chris Gardner on for a brief chat. For those of you who don’t recall, Gardner’s the guy whose life was powerfully portrayed by Will Smith in the film Pursuit of Happyness. Obviously, I give the guy mad props for fighting to become the success that he has; however, anyone who wears two watches (one on each wrist)…especially two gargantuan ones that are probably each worth well in excess of $10,000…is immediately relegated to d-bag status in my book. I’m all about well-gotten success, but flaunting it in such a manner is just lame. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. After all, the dude is friends with Glenn Beck. That by itself is cause for an immediate lowering of expectations.
Straits Kitchen
Each time I travel to Singapore, I slobber at the prospect of getting to eat at the Straits Kitchen, the buffet restaurant at the Grand Hyatt. My obsession with the place is so bad that each of my daily chats with Lizzi consists of at least one mention of how much I’m looking forward to eating dinner that night. So imagine my surprise when I saw Anthony Bourdain mention the place during one of his episodes of No Reservations, when he confessed to actually liking the food at a hotel restaurant. Below is a clip from his Singapore episode that mentions the restaurant (at around the 6:45 mark).
Feeling satisfied after yet another fine meal there this evening, I was struck by two observations that I thought worth sharing. First, in addition to the food being first rate, the service is redonkulously friendly. Everyone is so nice and helpful; kind of like the service in Japan but where the people come across as entirely genuine. Second, there were two women sitting next to me who were engaged in deep discussion as they chowed down on spicy crab and Singaporean noodles. Though I was slightly distracted by my chicken tikka masala and my International Herald Tribune, I listened in on their chat in a vain attempt to figure out where they were from since it was clearly not English that was being spoken. About thirty minutes in, I finally realized that they were speaking English the whole time, just with super thick Singaporean accents (punctuated by the obligatory “la”, kind of like how we always say “ya know”). I’m no accent novice, mind you. I once picked out a Bengali accent while out to dinner with the Mrs. in Tokyo (at an Italian restaurant, no less). This just made me realize that, though the Singaporeans speak English, actually understanding what is being said can be quite the challenge.
Cover Of The Day
In the spirit of American Idol, I’ve got to give a shout-out to this mighty fine rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine by David Archuleta.
Another Fun Quote
From Paul Tagliabue, NFL Commissioner:
I’m a firm believer that all sports will eventually be global. Someday, we may have a quarterback from China named Yao Fling.
Glasvegas
My main man Coley the Cole-man recently recommended that I give the Scottish rock band, Glasvegas, a listen. As usual, his taste in music proved spot-on, and I’ve been listening to the band’s self-titled album pretty much non-stop over the past week. For your listening pleasure, I’ve included a clip from one of the band’s live shows. The song is called Go Square Go and the part at the end gets me so fired up that it makes me want to smash my head through a window.
Fun Quote Of The Week
On the topic of a preacher giving “great sex” sermons at his church in Good Hope, Alabama, Roland Belew, an evangelist and former trucker who now preaches at a truck stop, had the following to say:
Paul said preach the Gospel. Talking about sex ain’t gonna get nobody to heaven.
No word on whether making a muck of the English language might prevent someone from entering the pearly gates.
Motor City Breakdown
I recently read a great piece by Mark Binelli in Rolling Stone about the decay of Detroit, which was once the fourth-largest city in the U.S. and a boomtown offering tons of jobs in the automotive industry. Some call it the birthplace of the American middle class, a beacon of hope for workers looking to make a future for themselves and their families while also providing the manufacturing bedrock that would help propel America into a hegemonic power. Nowadays, the city is a virtual ghost town – businesses have left in droves and crackhouses have sprung up in their wake. With one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, the city is an economic laughingstock, having never recovered from the “white flight” that reached its crescendo in the aftermath of the 12th street riot in 1967.
Much of the city’s demise can be blamed on the misguided leadership of the Big Three automakers, which has been well-documented. What hasn’t been mentioned nearly as much as a possible culprit is the ineptitude of Detroit’s political leadership, which only recently came under scrutiny after the city’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was slapped with a couple of felonies for obstruction of justice (I highly recommend a read of his bio in the link above – so ridiculous were his indiscretions that I eagerly await the inevitable book and/or movie).
Some of my friends who call Detroit (or thereabouts) their childhood home have sent around some fun video clips from city council meetings. When watching them, my first instinct is to laugh at how completely horrendous these people are. But then I kind of get depressed at the thought that these are the individuals charged with leading the city out of its doldrums. It really is shocking how ignorant and maladjusted these politicans are, which can turn a situation from sad to hopeless in a jiffy.
The first clip I’ll share is of Barbara-Rose Collins, a city council member whose past includes multiple accusations of corruption as well as an unfortunate incident where she apparently fired an aide after learning of his homosexuality for fear that he might carry AIDS. She’s also known for occasionally wearing a tiara to meetings. In the below clip, Collins inexplicably breaks into song after a long and disjointed monologue where she, among other things, attempted to draw parallels between white people stealing land from the “American Indians”…and apartheid in South Africa…and a proposed bailout of a local conference center. Her speech was highlighted by a wonderful fifteen second break from reality where she managed a breathtakingly misinformed mashup of history. On the topic of India, she told us that Arabs are smart and thanked them for the alphabet, geology, and geometry. And she referred to Mahatma Gandhi as “Mahutma Gambus”. I’m sure I don’t have to inform my intelligent readers that: 1) Indians are not Arabs; 2) though the first alphabets indeed evolved from Epytian hieroglyphs, she should really thank the ancient Romans for the latin alphabet we use today; 3) the man known as the Father of Geometry was a Greek mathematician named Euclid; and 4) we can thank the Greeks for geology as well. In any event, Onward Christian Soldiers!
Another person worth highlighting is the corrupt and ill-tempered Monica Conyers, current president of the Detroit city council and wife of U.S. congressman John Conyers (who himself has had plenty of run-ins with various ethics committees). Among other things, Ms. Conyers is perhaps best known for threatening her fellow councilmembers with violence, making fun of certain members’ hearing impairments, and calling the former city council president “Shrek” during a council meeting. The clip below shows the Shrek incident as well as a “debate” between Conyers and a group of middle school kids who wanted to question her for resorting to such lowly tactics. Two things stand out: 1) I love the name Charlie LeDuff, and I love his super cheesy persona even more; and 2) the deflection game she plays by arguing with those kids is incredibly irresponsible and depressing.
With leadership like this, Detroit has no hope whatsoever of rising from the ashes. Sadly, my guess is that Detroit isn’t alone when it comes to incompetence at the top. Seriously, folks. Can’t we do better than this?
Singapore = Efficiency
Consider the following anecdote one of the several reasons why I love Singapore. On my flight from Hong Kong today, wheels touched down at exactly 7:34 PM. I was in a cab by 7:50 and at my hotel at 8:05. And the taxi only cost me about $13. By comparison, were my flight to arrive at the exact same time at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, I would’ve arrived at home in central Tokyo by, say, 9:30 PM. If I took the train, the cost would’ve been roughly $50 USD for the train ticket and another $20 for the taxi from Tokyo Station. If I took a taxi all the way from Narita, I’d be looking at a $230 tab. Yet another reason why Tokyo simply can’t compete.
More Weed Wacking
As an addendum to my earlier post on the legalization of marijuana, I wanted to share with everyone a chat between Glenn Beck and Rob Kampia, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. Not surprisingly, Beck was massively over-matched in this discussion. Not only did he approach the topic of pot from an incredibly immature perspective, but he offered nothing in the way of legitimate counterpoints in debating Kampia’s well-stated and well-researched arguments. It’s quite comical, actually. Not only were Beck’s comments devoid of any statement of fact or substance, but his whole angle on the subject is impossible to identify since he jumps around in frustratingly incongruous fashion.
Just for the record, I’m not a proponent of legalizing marijuana because I’m a big consumer of the product. In fact, I don’t like it at all. Having inhaled on a handful of occassions, I realize that pot puts me in a largely catatonic state – I turn quiet, stare off into space for an hour, then go to sleep. Not much fun, really. I much prefer a cold bottle of Miller Light or a nice glass of wine to get my kicks. Obviously, that’s a personal preference and I certainly don’t begrudge anyone their tokes. My overarching point with all this is that – from a policy perspective – labeling marijuana illegal simply doesn’t make any sense.
