Gettin Squirrely

I have a few things I could get worked up about, but I’m going to calm this one out. Someone tossed a rock through the driver’s side window on my car last night. It was parked at the commuter rail station. Nothing was taken. The local constables were predictably uninterested and useless. I don’t know what I pay $4 a day for, but it definitely isn’t a safe parking area. I only wish the emo freak that did it used a smaller rock. I guess they weren’t very strong because they had to use a cantaloupe sized bolder to get the task done. It dinged up the inside of the car more than I would have liked. I have given thought to cruising town today looking for teenagers to waterboard, but I will pass. Unrelated to broken glass, there is an article in the NYtimes today about the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ generation. Seems someone turned down a ‘dead end’ job paying $40g a year because he thinks he deserves the corner office. This is particularly irritable to me since I have a couple of unnamed and inadvertant connection to this child. I had a dead end insurance job once, it paid $26g a year. I worked nights at a grocery store for bender money. There were bills and loans and all sorts of good stuff to take care of. Eventually I made some connections (friends) and got some jobs that were a little better than the dead end insurance job. After reading about this dingdong’s plight, I have resolved to integrate this into job interview questions I ask. From now on, I am going to inquire about the nitty gritty jobs people leave off the resume and the dead end work they fought through. I work with some people who did some crappy work back in the day and they are by far the best people I have worked with. Anyone who sniffs of ‘deserving it’ is going to get an hour of verbal waterboarding and then a swift gtfo. But I’m not worried about that nonsense. It doesn’t affect me one bit. What I am interested in these days is Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern gray tree squirrel. Gray tree squirrels are able to jump a distance of ten times body length, rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and learn by observation through eyes that see as well peripherally as straight ahead. One of 278 species of squirrel, they outcompete inferior red and black squirrels everywhere they travel to. Why am I thinking about squirrels? Because these days, they give me great mental exercise. You see, M and I have a bird feeder. We’ve had one since we moved out to the woods here. Initially it was a $5 cheapo model, and this lasted a few years. We had a lot of birds. So many that we had to close the windows on weekend mornings because the sounds were too loud for extended sleep. There were chipmunks who scouted the feeder occasionally. I tried eradicating them and their holes with the infamous ‘chipper dipper’. Eventually I realized the rodents would keep coming like the red army at Stalingrad, so I took the dipper out of circulation. The old feeder eventually fell apart so we got another cheapo one this year. By mid april, it was already destroyed, covered in gnaw marks. Whatever was eating the seed also felt the need to eat the feeder itself. Maybe it was the fruit and nut blend that attracted the chipmunks, but it looked good to me so we bought it. In hindsight putting granola in a bird feeder is kind of silly, since it’s basically animal food, but I fell for the marketing. Now that the feeder was destroyed, we escalated. This time it was a metal feeder. It had a cage protecting the feeding posts. It weighed a ton. And food disappeared from it like there was a hole in the bottom. After a few days of this, I saw what was happening to the food. Chipmunks were jumping into the feeder and sitting in the seed tray and leisurely gorging themselves. I could chase them all day, but eventually they stopped being scared and practically did it in front of me. I rigged some extensions to make the feeder farther away from the chipmunk launching point. No luck. They are better jumpers than I realized. We were still getting birds, but they were mostly big jays that weren’t afraid of the chipmunks. None of the smaller colorful birds would go anywhere near the chippers. Several attempts at sealing off the fence into an unclimbable obstruction were useless, especially since I can only control our side of the fence and the neighbor’s side it still eminently climbable. When it came time for new bird seed, I moved over to the high stakes table. Since we were buying the expensive stuff, we needed better security. I remembered some tactics that we used back in L-town – namely smooth plastic obstacles that rendered highly evolved climbing claws useless. I decided on either sheet metal or lexan to cover the fence. M found some plastic ceiling light covers, like those seen in dentist offices all over the world. Perfect and at a fraction of the cost. Expensive seed and plastic sheet in hand we were ready to check out when something caught our eye – an item called a ‘squirrel log’. It’s a cylinder of compressed corn dust that you attach to something via a large screw. I figured I could give them an alternative, maybe broker a peace of sorts. I affixed squirrel log and plastic, loaded up the feeder and sat back to watch. Initially, it was a huge success. I saw the first chipmunk investigate the log. He took a sniff, then a nibble, then attacked with incisors blazing. The cylinder immediately took a bullet shape as more and more corn was removed. I gave it 3 days, tops, before I would need to reload. Eventually he got tired (or full) and moved on. It wasn’t until a few days later when I noticed I had a bigger problem than a little brown chipmunk. It hadn’t occurred to me that squirrels might be behind the attacks. Actually it had, but I just hadn’t seen any. I figured the woods were filled with easy food or better feeders, so why come after ours? This was a terrible miscalculation. While the feeder was far enough away from the fence to make it unobtainable by jumping, the pole the feeder was attached to was unguarded. I observed my enemy closely. It was a young squirrel, not very thick or furry. He would try climbing the fence, notice the obstruction, try to climb the plastic, fail, and then attempt a different route. This worked for a while until he realized he could climb an unprotected section of fence and simply walk across the top to get to the feeder. I planned for this and had erected a plastic bucket on top the feeder, open side up. This achieves two things. One, it is plastic and therefore unclimbable. Second, it is unstable and squirrels do not like climbing on things that feel like they are going to fall over. I howled with delight watching the young fella try and scale the bucket, only to tumble to the ground. I left for work, confident that I had won. It was only when M picked me up at the train that I learned my victory was temporary and the feeder was once again vulnerable. Undeterred, I took up an observation post and learned that he was using his miracle ankles and Olympian abdominal muscles to do some sort of inverted behind the back sit-up move while hanging off a thin metal pole. Since I cannot perform this maneuver, it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. carolinensis would be able to, but I should have known better. Years ago, back in L-town, I saw some of the best of the breed in action. These were huge, tough monsters. For almost an entire summer I watched my parents apply years of accumulated engineering and renovating experience to the problem, only to find feeders ransacked day after day. I saw squirrel blood on sharp metal in the pursuit of seed. Endlessly flinging themselves off of shutters, trees, other squirrels, anything to get a single claw grip on a feeder to pull themselves up. More recently I observed a feeder that was affixed to glass by suction cups. Theoretically a squirrel cannot climb glass. But that knowledge did not deter the individual I saw. He figured that climbing a house and throwing himself against the glass was only one step closer to the seed and nut motherlode. A few years back there were accounts of a squirrel and tomato conflict down in the Philadelphia area. Reports came in of elaborate defenses and tenacious attacks, terrible interrogations and great atrocities, but the squirrels are never deterred, never discouraged. So today, sitting at home, waiting for the car glass man to call me back, I sit and observe again. I set my desk so I have a prime view of the battlefield. Early in the day there were several successful raids. After chasing them off I watched how the breached the defenses and have erected more. For the last hour the battle has been quiet. Perhaps they are seeking easier quarry, perhaps it is too hot for such games. (edit – I just caught him doing the sit-up thing again.. I missed the attack, but the new defenses are apparently useless... dammit) FYI - here’s the setup (the sock thing is another feeder the squirrels have no interest in):

“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”

The Next American Idol Judge

I would like to announce that I am in the running to be the next American Idol judge. Replacing Simon Cowell will be a big job, but I think I am up for it. I have a great appetite for terrible music and a chronic addiction to making fun of people for anything and everything that they have no control over. All the travel will be a strain on me, but I think M wil go along with it and we get the summer to prepare for the next round of additions. I’m excited at the prospect of joining the show and working with Randy, Kara and Ellen.

Unrelated to my future employer, M and I just got back from a lengthy stay in the great Canadian Rockies. As one traveler said at the Peyto Lake stop: “Mother nature doesn’t do it any better than this”. I have to agree. I can’t imagine many other places that could consistently fill me with awe and wonder. Great raw natural beauty and abundant wildlife made for an experience that made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy for obvious reasons, but sad because that joker was right – it’s not going to get much better than this. I have set myself up to be disappointed for years to come. This does not mean I regret going – quite the opposite. I am glad we saw it now while we are young and can remember it for years to come. This, as opposed to the hordes of older folks rolling around in motor homes, taking in these sights in their golden years. My eyes are probably better than theirs, so even though we were looking at the same thing I think I saw it better and will remember it for longer. We got to see all the animals from the guidebooks, but the most unexpected one was a porcupine. He was one of the coolest critters I have ever seen. Calgary and Phoenix were just ok as waystops on the trip. Phoenix was filled with people wearing similar outfits and Calgary was kind of a blah town. I’m not going to say much else about it here. Ridiculous, amazing, wonderful.

Our Canada car, a Hyundai Accent hatchback, was pretty cool. It was cheap and slow and rough on bumps, but it had potential. I’m a big fan of the hatchback. If M wanted to get set up in a VW GTI or Mini Cooper S or some other hot hatch, I would not be opposed to that.

There’s a mirror in the kebab house, a café near where I work. This is the greatest mirror on the planet. Most mirrors are pretty sweet because they contain such wonderful subject matter, but this one must have better lighting or something, because I always rock this mirror particularly hard. It’s tough ordering lunch there, so I bring lunch to avoid the awkwardness.

Gumballs

On my way to work today I saw a BMW with a wierd paint job. It sort of looked like a police car, but with a lot of stickers on it and with a black matte paint scheme. It was pretty ugly, but the tuned exhaust sounded ferocious. It had a GUMBALL3000 logo on it. This was unusual. That's a very specific kind of car rally, usually with the most extreme vehicles in the world driven by a collection of spoiled rich folk reeking of B.O. and cigarettes. I didn't think anything of it until I was in the office and heard the wailing exhaust of exotic motors echoing up and down the street. One look out the window and I had to run downstairs. Veyrons, McLarens, Morgans, GT3s eveywhere. I didn't have my cell phone! Oh noes! I had to run back. By the time to got back most of them were gone. I managed to get a few of the stragglers though.

This is a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. Roughly $400,000 worth of carbon fiber and unicorn teeth.

This is the front end of said car, held together with duct tape.

Here is the downmarket version of the car above, the Gallardo. It's got a sweet chrome paint job.
This is the owner of the classy Chrome Lambo. He's dressed for an oil drill opening. That's a Ferrai 430? I think?

Here's a convertible version of the chrome Lamborghini.
And I believe this is a Ferrari 599...
For some sad reason, I was the only person at work who found this interesting. Oh well. It made my day.

Check out the Gumball3000 webpage for details of these people and what they are doing.

the latest

Man oh man.. has it really been over a month? I guess it has. And what a month it has been. I suppose the biggest news is that I'm sort of switching jobs. I'm not leaving my current company, but I will be doing some new stuff on a new team. This is a big change, considering I've been doing the same type of work for over 5 years. It's a little like graduating I suppose. The official date for the switch is as yet undetermined, but it will happen soon. The new role is going to involve a lot less travel, so the days of free Starwood vacations are going away, which makes M sad, but it means I'm home more.

Speaking of travel, I just got back from a trip to Toronto. Three scheduled days became three nights when the flight got cancelled and replacement flights were not obtainable. The airline was nice enough to provide a hotel. Luckily I was with two co-workers, so it was not a totally lonely experience. There happened to be a Nickelback concert in town, which meant a lot of rowdy Nickelback fans. I'm not really a follower of them or their fans, but it was an interesting mix of people. We saw a really incredible moustache on a Gene Simmons look-alike and some generally rowdy and inappropriate behavior. Good times all around. The hotel was part of the Fairmount chain and there were a lot of pictures of the Fairmount hotels in Banff, Jasper and Lake Louise. While M and I are not going to those specific hotels, it was nice to get a little preview of things to come. While I was trying to leave, I dropped my phone underneath the bed and it managed to slide far enough that I had to get on my stomach to reach to get it. Let's just say that hotel beds, even in nice hotels, should never be looked under, much less examined for lost items. I found a peanut and a dozen prehistoric Cheerio-type objects under there. I guess a snack mix party had taken place some time ago.

With that little food segue over, I wanted to share some more tales of train commuting. I spend a lot of time staring out the window, inventing stories for what I pass by every day. One of the things I pass are other, non-commuter train railroad cars. Most of them are standard boxcars, which are probably pretty mundane. Then there are the tanker cars that for some reason are required to say what they contain. Why is this interesting? Because there is some bizarre studff in these cars. Corn Syrup is a popular one. I didn't realize corn syrup was transported in such large quantities, but considering how much of it is consumed, I suppose it's fitting that it gets shipped in 30,000 gallon gulps. Refrigerated carbon dioxide liquid is another boring one. Beef Tallow always piques my curiosity. Why would anyone need so much beef tallow? Where does it come from? I know it comes from cows/processing plants but where? Probably Kansas or some other flyover state. The one that blew my mind was a car that was labeled 'Non-edible meat products'. Say what? What are non-edible meat products? I've never seen a car labeled 'edible meat products'. I guess I assumed that unrefrigerated meat was generally accepted as being non-edible after a point. What does one do with non-edible meat products? Cosmetics? Dog food? What's even stranger is that I don't believe there are any cosmetics or dog food factories nearby. There is a giant Cumberland Farms warehouse/plant just off the rail line, but I can't imagine they use a lot on non-edible meat products. Why are these products in a tanker car? Are they liquified?

You may have noticed the Masters, or as I call it, the toonament (say it with a slow southern accent, it's fantastic) has started. This is my traditional start to the golf season. I've been to the range a couple of times and even played 9 last weekend. The incessant rain has limited the number of courses that are actually open. I think the golf crowd is starting to get cabin fever a little bit. I don't really have an opinion on Eldrick Woods, other than he's a giant asshat. I'll enjoy watching some of the final round as the Jim Nance narrates the action as only he can.

I recently read 'The Book of Basketball' by Bill Simmons. M and I joined the local library and I had a hard time finding something I was interested in reading. Not because I don't find books interesting, but because there were too many of them. I listen to the author's podcast and read his ESPN articles. In general I think he's a funny guy with some tendencies toward dated references and an inexplicable love for bad reality TV. He's also a basketball fanatic, which I am not and I secretly wanted to hate his book. Unfortunately, his book writing is much better than his podcasting and article writing, making The Book of Basketball immensely enjoyable.

Italian Opera and the Windy City

Many (well, I don’t know how ‘many’ of you there are, I suspect I can count on one hand) of you know that while I work in a techie field, I am not necessarily a tech fiend. I don’t jump on social networking sites (for kids), I don’t worship at the altar of Steve Jobs (the economist begs to differ), and I still insist on keeping a Yellow Pages in the house, because they’re useful dammit (and I think in some instances faster than the internet). However, I do love me some Internet. I get to consume hours of content (of questionable taste and usefulness) every day. I do research, deep dives into esoteric topics, keep on top of whatever political vein I follow, and make attempts to keep tabs of what pop culture I can get my hands on. I can easily see what the top songs in Itunes are, then make a quick listen so the next time I hear new music out in public, I (theoretically) know what it is. M tends to do better at this than I do, but I digress. I’m plugged into a few websites that do a decent job of digesting what’s out there and giving me the easy version of it so I have knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep. This is the way I like it. Last night the internet rose up to meet my expectations once again. There I was, sitting on the train, reading my ink and paper New Yorker, when I came across an article about a dead composer. His life sounded interesting so I decided to hear what his music sounded like. I pulled out the iphone, fired up youtube and searched for him. I found a few samples, took a taste and quickly spat it out. Disgusting (Iannis Xenakis, in case you were wondering). So I had youtube open, classical on the mind, and a longtime question came to mind. What was that music playing as Max Cady was driving around in his Mustang convertible? This is a reference to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 film ‘Cape Fear’. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) was a generally bad dude, who instantly became somewhat awesome to a 14 year old in the opening scene of a hardened prison character with a gigantic cross tattooed across his shoulders and down his back doing a hard core prison workout and exuding the personality of a rattlesnake. So there’s this one scene where Max is driving around, blasting some opera music and ticking off the checklist of movie madman (psychopathic personality – yes, inexplicable affinity for high culture/art – yes, thinking 5 steps ahead of everyone else – yes, alternately menacing and charming everyone – yes), and this music was really cool sounding. It had this great quality of being triumphant and enlightened and ol Max just looked like he was doing whatever he wanted. This was great 18 years ago and it still is. Except I have no idea what the song was. It’s not on the soundtrack (movie soundtracks never have the good stuff). Movie Credits are really hard to find online. And it sounded too old and Italian to be something created just for the movie. Previous web searches came up empty, but maybe this time I’d get lucky. There was my answer – Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ – Per te D’immenso Giubilo – I’m not an opera person. Wikipedia says Donizetti was pretty good at it though. This loosely translates to ‘immens jubilation for you’ and it sort of sounds like a celebration, which is what I was having when I found it. I’m sorry it took a character like Max to get me to go searching out classical Italian opera, but if that’s what it takes…

I just got back from a trip to Chicago (work, not pleasure). I love Chicago. Something about it resonates with me. It’s new(er). I guess completely burning down can have a decent effect on your city. San Francisco has a similar feel to it. It’s huge, but not as overwhelming as NYC seems. It doesn’t stink, the people are mostly polite. There’s a whole lot less car honking and crazy driving. For some reason it just seems more civilized. Maybe it was just the parts I see, but that’s the way it is. I was there over the weekend and tried to do a little sightseeing, which is more than I do when I travel for work. Unfortunately I was sort of on call, so I couldn’t wander too far. On a recent trip to Toronto some coworkers and I went on field trips to find great burgers. This is a noble task. Here is almost zero chance of finding a bad burger, and you get to do a little traveling. So why not find the good burger in every town? Chicago had a highly ranked burger about 10 miles from where I was staying, so I jumped in a cab and headed out. Unfortunately, as M and I discovered in an attempt to go to a great pizza place in Brooklyn, when there is a highly regarded establishment in a gigantic city, there is a good chance it will be completely overrun. And this was true in Chicago as well. I took a $25 cab to the middle of nowhere and completely struck out. If I was with a group, there is at least some camaraderie or shared excitement for the endeavor, which can spur people to withstand long outdoor lines in rain/snow/deep freeze. When one is alone, that excitement is considerably lessened. I took a look at the line and crowded bar and said hell no. I crossed the street to get a cab going the other way. As soon as I crossed, I peeked in a bar window and saw people being served truly epic looking burgers. As much as I wanted to flip the whole endeavor the bird, I was starving and these looked amazing. The bar was empty, the Olympics were on, so why not? I sat down, ordered the burger and struck up a conversation with two heavily tattooed and pierced guys who were pounding Pabst Blue Ribbon in between Marlboro breaks. They were cooks at the place I tried to go initially, and they HATED it. They came to where I was sitting now to get burgers. The way I see it, if you want a goo d haircut, don’t go someplace where everyone cutting hair has a good haircut, go to the place they go to get their hair cut. I was eating where the best burger cooks in Chicago go to get burgers. I was not disappointed. I suppose my favorite aspect of the burger was the pretzel bun. This is going to be incorporated into all summer burger cooks from now on. In case you were wondering, the first place I wanted to go can be found here http://www.kumascorner.com/food and the place I ended up at is here http://www.squarechicago.com/square_menu.pdf - I got the ‘Big Square’.

Along by travels, I stumbled across a restaurant called Bice. This is another happy accident with en equally long winded story. On our first vacation together, M and I went to Quebec/Montreal for a long weekend. In Montreal, as we strolled the July streets, we decided to get dinner at a place called Bice. It was a memorable dinner, one of the first meals of truly excellent food we shared. Bice has a few locations around the world and we decided to try them as we traveled to world. Not to travel exclusively to eat at these places, but if we happened to be in town with one, we’d stop in. First we found one in Orlando. I forget what I ate, but M tried the Osso Bucco with saffron risotto. Well, at least we learned that we don’t like saffron. Not the greatest, but a nice little diversion. Next, we learned there might be in Monte Carlo – we looked and it was long gone. I just realized today there is one in Madrid, but can’t find anything else on it. If we had known, maybe we would have looked, but I think we did pretty well for eating in Espana. Of course we could have gotten lost and then had a hungry fight and then regretted it, so best to let that one slide. Well I found one in Chicago, the menu looks good, and I know for certain where it is. There may be a weekend trip in the near future.

Speaking of cooking, look at this stove. For those of you not into hand enameled custom built cast iron French ranges, this is a La Cornue Chateau 120. It starts at around $11,000. This particular model was in the employee kitchen of the office I was in. You’ll notice the granite countertop. They don’t use it for a stove. Towels are currently being stored in the ovens. I offered to take it off their hands if they didn’t want it. My offer was politely declined.

The last picture I’m going to share is of some spray painted silver sticks in a tall glass cylinder with glass beads in the bottom. Oh yeah, I’ve seen these before: at our wedding. M and I were way out in front of that one. Granted the concierge at the W Lakeshore gave me some weird looks, but forget him. This was too good to pass up.

Movies - The Hurt Locker. Watch this movie now. It’s really good. Not quite an action movie, not quite a war movie. Not a tourist film for the middle east. The Ladykillers – kind of weird, even for the Coen brothers. Not particularly recommended. Surrogates – this was better than I expected. Good to see Bruce Willis still has a fastball. And it was shot in Boston. Always nice to see Boston in the movies. Fast and Furious – I don’t know why I like these movies so much. This was another monster addition to the franchise. I’m looking forward to the next one. So good. John Adams – period film by HBO. Long, historical and really entertaining. I wanted to brush everyone’s teeth in it though. Good to see they got 18^th century oral hygiene correct. Not a kindly portrayal of King Louis. Slumdog Millionaire – very watchable.

Fridays rule

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSDkwnAnkfM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMM9O9Ftixg&NR=1

I can't take full credit for these, but I will put them up as examples of people with access to free soda and a small mean streak

Things heard on the commuter train

The other day I was listening to a podcast with Hollwood director Jason Reitman. He recently won a golden globe for his screenplay for ‘Up in the Air’, which M and I saw and both enjoyed greatly. He also directed ‘Juno’ (we liked that as well) and ‘Thank You For Smoking’ (I have not seen that one yet). He is also the son of famous and mega successful producer/writer/director Ivan Reitman. On the surface it seems like this guy should be a monumental tool. He joked that he was so at ease in the Beverly Hilton because he’d been to so many Bar Mitzvahs there. Boo Hoo. Growing up in Beverly Hills is so hard to do. He talked about how he had every privilege and consideration, never had to worry about where his next dollar was coming from, etc. But he also discussed how difficult it was for him once he decided he wanted to be a director. Being the son of an already successful director, one would think that daddy could pull some strings and get him some easy work. This might work in some slacktastic world like politics or law, where there seems to be a plethora of legacy country club overpaid hacks, but in other professions you have to have some actual talent and being a relation of someone famous can be a hinderance. I am sure Michael Jordan’s sons get guarded extra hard by defenders who want to say they shut down MJ’s kid and he sucks. Being the scion of a great talent means you’re always going to be compared to them and not your actual peers. The point it, Jason Reitman told a very sad tale about how no one wanted to work with him and he got his start with lots of commercials and small Sundance-type films. Now he’s an award winning director, working with A-list stars and his movies and scripts get tons of critical buzz. And he’s 32 years old. WHAT? Come on. When I heard that, I wanted to toss the iphone off the train. 32? (it must run the family – Ivan Reitman’s Animal House came out when he was 32. Since then it’s been Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters - all good ones – ending with My Super ex Girlfriend in 2006 at the ripe ol age of 60). I’m 32 and I have no industry awards to my name. I don’t even know what awards my industry gives out. I know I’m the same age as Tom Brady and he has 3 superbowl rings and an MVP award. But most pro athletes are finished by age 30, and I didn’t exactly live at the gym during my teens and 20s, so I am not feeling any pain there. And at least I won’t limp when I’m 50. Most musicians blow up well before their 30s. If you’re trying to make pop music in your 30s, forget it. I can’t even sing Happy Birthday, so I don’t allocate and shelf space to missing Grammy’s. Plus, the really legendary musicians are dead by 27 and I’m way past that. And John Mayer really is a douche.

I’m not just saying that. Pardon the sidebar, but he was in the NYTimes, talking about his watch collection. I’m a big fan of watches and know a lot about them. From what they showed, I was unimpressed. There’s one pretty boring Patek Phillipe he owns, it has a bunch of diamonds on it, and he’s up there bragging about how unique and spectacular it is. There are a hundred similar looking pieces out there. “I have a Patek Philippe 5971 — platinum perpetual calendar, diamond baguettes on the bezel. I know it to be the most beautiful watch with diamonds”. Patek Phillipe is the Rolls Royce is watches, don’t get me wrong. But it’s expected for a rich guy to own one. I would never expect a ‘car guy’ to actually drive a Rolls or Bentley. Give me something interesting, something rare, exceptional. It’s the default ‘I have a ton of cash’ toy with a shiny label. Everyone knows Rolex and Patek Phillipe, Rolls Royce and Ferrari. Give me a Richard Mille or HD3 for a watch, give a Koenigsegg or Gumpert Apollo for a car. I want something that no one I ever meet will know anything about. Ok Rant over.

Van Gogh was pretty much washed up by 32. Of course he was insane and killed himself at 37, but that’s not an excuse. It’s well documented that math freaks do their best work by their early 20s. If you’re not a certifiable math celebrity by 28, get a new line of work. So here I am, 6 months from being 33 and I don’t have the great lifetime accomplishment anywhere on my horizon. I know everyone thinks, deep down, when that look in that mirror every day, scratching their armpit, that they are above average. I hate to break the news, but that’s mathematically impossible. At least half of us are below average. There are 3 billion people below average. Of course there are 3 billion above average as well. Maybe I am one of them? The comic book industry makes a lot of money off the premise that hidden deep inside ever cellar dwelling pale skinned geek is a super power just waiting to reveal itself. I’m not holding out hope for my flying abilities to one day just appear.

In the middle of a segment about how directors have their most creative period, Reitman had the courtesy to mention that for directors, that creative burst tends to come in their late 30s and early 40s. He’s in his peak now because he started earlier. So maybe my peak is just about to happen? I’m worried that I peaked sometime in 2005, right about the time I was crushing Madden and tearing up the streets of Grand Theft Auto in record style. Playstation2 could have been my big moment and I just let it fly by. Actors have the luxury of having extended peaks, because they get to grow with the roles they are offered. Maybe you can’t pull off the grizzled Army General when you’re 23, but you have the young soldier role. For non-actors, maybe there isn’t a peak? When I think of a peak, I automatically assume that’s when you’re making the most money. From what I can tell, for white men, that’s when you’re 55 with a nice set of silver temples and Seacrest-white teeth. At that point, you’re in charge of something, playing a lot of golf and cashing checks with all sorts of commas. Creatively though, I bet these codgers best days are way behind them. I don’t know what the value of the old guy is, except to get along with the old guys at the top of the other businesses they deal with and call in accumulated favors for their own benefit. They rely on young people who want to work 80 hours a week to do the real work. So maybe I have another 23 years to go until I hit that peak? My great invention hasn’t flickered in the brain yet, the great novel sits cobwebbed and unwritten, the political career ended sometime in 1997; the modeling days at about the same time. On the flip side, street criminal has definitely passed me by. I think the peak age for that is somewhere in the teens or 20s. By 32 you’re dead or in jail. Hipster is also long gone. 32 year olds serving coffee with skinny jeans and Amish beards are straight losers. Good thing, too. Beards and I do not get along.