bicycle race

tomorrow i'll be riding in the tour de houston. i haven't rode in it since '06 when i rode a mountain bike and was easily passed by grandmas and their fat, overweight grandchildren. but somehow i got through 40 miles and i'm going to do 40 again, unless anyone else wants to do 70. i'm pretty sure i can do the 70. a friend is going to hook me with a sweet bike, so hopefully i'll be gliding through the air, my wheels barely touching the ground.

has anyone listened to the new u2 album? what a bunch of crap. i kinda of liked their last album. but this thing....wow. "get on your boots" is terrible. it's a total hunk of pro tools vomit. the rest is slow-paced and lyrically abysmal. i expect a lot from u2. "the joshua tree," "achtung baby," and "zooropa" are great, great records. since "pop" they really don't seem to know their way. or something like that.

here is an exerpt from another wildly outrageous, but ultimately entertaining and truth-laden rolling stone article:

"It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire."

the rest is here.

upstairs at eric's

i don't know why that album title cracks me up, but it does. "if you want me, i'll be upstairs at eric's." i'm laughing typing that line. i am in a slightly abandoned part of a building. the cleaning lady is the only person i have seen all day unless i ventured out on my own. so i'm in this old abandoned office and i keep hitting my foot on this giant computer tower. so i'm checking it out and i notice a stack of cds on top of it. here are the cds i found:

1. yaz- upstairs at erics
2. inxs- kick
3. erasure- the innocents
4. just say yo- a volume II of just say yes (some kind of remix compilation)
5. inxs- X
6. the church- starfish
7. concrete blonde- bloodletting
8. zz top- greatest hits
9. the outfield- play deep
10. pat green- dancehall dreamer

so by the looks of these cds, this office has been abandoned since 1986. i love the 80's theme with zz top and pat green mixed in there. and what is the outfield? and why do they have an album called, "play deep"? that is so funny. i already listened to inxs "kick" and yaz "upstairs at eric's." i'm currently listening to erasure. i can turn this up as loud as i want and no one will be bothered because i'm in the center of nowhere.

dude, "ship of fools." erasure, yes!

we came along this road

systemic risk. is AIG a systemic risk? they sure think so. here's an internal letter from those great civil patrons at AIG.

seems obama is going to try and undo the bonuses at AIG.

here's a list/story of who's on AIG's bankroll.

AIG's latest disclosure from footnoted.

i'm a little obsessed with this story. not because they gave out bonus money from our tax money, as asinine as that is, but because someone actually believes bonuses are deserved! what the hell? you have a company on the bubble accepting government money to continue operations. does that sound like someone is doing a good job? anybody? are these bonuses going to the guys who clean the floor or empty the garbage? because those guys probably are doing a good job even when the company almost doesn't exist. it's amazing. corporate america is amazing.

in other news.....

the avclub has a great list of television shows that changed characters/plots/entire stories. most of the ones from the 80's i remember, like charles in charge and valerie and the facts of life. even though i was young, i was like, "who are these people? what happenend here?"

finished the watchmen book this past weekend. i also saw the movie. i actually saw the movie before i finished the book, which usually wouldn't be a big deal because the movie never follows the book. but this movie followed it to the letter. i mean whole passages of dialogue were the same. plus, you ever watch a movie and think it's pretty good, but the further you get away from it, the more you think it wasn't very good. that's how i feel about this movie.

bob dylan's going to be releasing a new album soon.

i'm so vain

"i'm so vain, i probably think this song is about me!"

videos:

nick cave and the bad seeds: "more news from nowhere"
nick cave and the bad seeds: "dig, lazarus, dig"
nick cave and the bad seeds: "night of the lotus eaters"

radiohead: "house of cards"
radiohead: "pyramid song"

leatherbag: "on down the line"

carly simon: "you're so vain" w/chinese captions

paul mccartney/wings: "too many people/big barn bed"

the strokes: "last nite"

spoon: "the underdog"
spoon: "i turn my camera on"

the truth

holy shit. i am currently watching/listening to the john stewart interview with jim cramer. i am hearing exactly what i've been thinking in my head out of the mouth of john stewart.

you don't generate profit by blowing up the house. that's the bubble mentality. don't buy into it. recognize it for what is and play by those rules. play by the rules of the shadow banking system and hopefully you won't get burned. either that, or invest your money in yogurt stands. those things are gold.

your redneck past

i missed it. i don't have cable and apparently i missed the undressing of the new century. jim cramer, who i was obsessed with early on in my education of stocks/finance, was on the daily show last night. now although john stewart is a funny man, he has a knack for pinpointing hypocracy within the media. he did it with crossfire, which was subsequently cancelled, and now he's doing with CNBC as a whole. i agree with his assessment to a point. yes- CNBC is not for the average investor who watches it for stock information. yes- CNBC was so far up the ass of corporate america that they could not see the fall coming and it brings their journalistic integrity into question.

but....come on. if you are watching jim cramer and following his advice to a tee without doing your due diligence and investigating where you're putting your money, you're an idiot. john stewart's right: this isn't a game. this is real. these losses are real. that's why i cannot understand for the life of me why people put their money in these stocks/mutual funds/hedge funds and never look at it again. or investigate who is in charge. who makes the calls. who handles the checks. information is power. you have to know where your money is and what is happening with it.

i have since recognized that jim cramer is an idiot. the person i listen to for stock advice now is the tiny man who lives in my sock drawer. his name is ted and i found him paddling on a bar of soap on buffalo bayou during a rainstorm. we started talking and he was looking for a place to stay. i suggested my sock drawer and he was fine with that as long as i fed him honey nut cheerios. he actually wades in the bowl of milk to eat the cheerios. it's really funny. but he's got great stock advice. like one time he told me: "i would never fetch a reindeer if i wasn't sure which way was north." brilliant. made thousands of dollars that day. another time he said: "it's not called bluffing if you're not wearing underwear." another thousand dollars. sometimes he talks of travelling and wants to get out, but i put a lock on the sock drawer so he's not going anyway. ah, ted.

more news from nowhere

"then a black girl with no clothes on danced across the room, we charted the progress of the planets around that boogie-wongie moon, i called her my nubian princess, i gave her some sweet-back bad-ass jive, i spent the next seven years between her legs pining for my wife."

-nick cave, "more news from nowhere," dig, lazarus, dig

the fact that i am getting into this album as much as i am is starting to tell me something. i feel like i've entered into the second phase of my life. this second phase didn't have a definitive beginning and i'm sure the next one won't either. it just happens. you wake up and see the world a little different. you have different opinions and your concerns are different as well. songs like "more news from nowhere" ring around in your head. leonard cohen's music. the concern for what is new and exciting (in the way of music, fashion, etc.) gives way to exploration of your own personality, your faults, your desires, your relationships. there's a calmness that is taking over me. the edges are sharper, but only used on rare occasions.

it's not something i can truly discuss within the text of this blog because it's not something i completely have a handle on yet. it's emerging and it's not even considered true fact yet. but i like it.

great little article/conversation about george lucas and steven spielberg discussing the raiders of the lost ark. lawrence kasdan is there too, but, really, who cares?

citi claims they made a profit and the market vomits happiness. let's see what happens through the rest of the week.

these are some really awful poses, but the morning show on 1560 the game is the best in houston. john and lance are freakin' hilarious. lance doing his uncle drayton impersonation and john calling people out. it's the best. i was listening this morning to them talking about sheriff blaylocks nachos at minute maid and uncle drayton giving away free foul balls. it was great.

seriously

no more auction block

there's no better feeling than doing something nice for someone you love. that's how i spent my weekend. well saturday, i worked all day. sunday i spent all day doing something nice. but saturday night was interesting. i was alone. my wife is out of town for the week and i had nothing to do. i didn't want to drink at all. so i drove down to get some coffee and decided to check out the bookstore over off of shepard and walabama. i saw some good stuff, but nothing i decided to buy. the new mojo magazine had a cover of nick cave and my mind got to thinking about his music.

but before i decided to expand on that, i thought i would look for cheaper books at the half price bookstore near montrose. i found a pretty good book by roger lowestein called origins of the crash. he's the same guy who wrote when genius failed about the spectacular death of long-term capital. so i got that book and looked around their used cd section for nick cave albums. didn't find any, so i went to soundwaves on montrose to find them there. didn't find them there either and that place has gotten way expensive. so i trucked it over to the new cactus records to look there and they didn't have any either. so i decided to call it a night, but before i went home, i went by target to see what i could find there. they had a sale on the john adams miniseries and i also got the watchmen book. but that's where i got the grand idea about what i wanted to do for my wife.

i won't divulge the details, but it's pretty sweet. i think she's going to love it when she gets home. to close up the nick cave story, i found my way to a website called secondspin.com and they had them there. i got let love in and nocturama.

anyway, pretty unusual weekend.

monkberry moon delight

paul mccartney's early stuff is pretty weird/good. they're strange little musical ideas that he doesn't always expand on, he just kind of introduces them and throws some crazy words around them and then that's it. his self titled and ram are great albums. and there's one track called big barn bed. nice.

all these amazon links, i need to charge them advertising.

lots of people have lost their jobs in the past few months. if you have a job, feel fortunate. i know three people who have been laid off. if you don't have a job and you don't mind getting sunburned, there are still a few corners left in houston to work. or just stand next to an atm. you know those people have money.

here's a review of the watchmen.

you know, sometimes rules are good. so they're trying to reinstitute a law that was in place like 80 years or something and then they dropped it and it took 10 years to have a depression. correlations do exist between responsibility and financial stability.

i actually have a link to this act from way back when. i can't find it, but it's back there somewhere. here's a new link to it.

i cannot believe there is a video for this song.

talkin' bout the smiling deathporn immortality blues

wow.

working 10 and 12 hour days gets a little tiring after a week. actually two weeks. here are some quick hits:

the arcade fire versus the flaming lips

i can't believe i was in iceland in may and now the entire country is bankrupt. here's the story of how it happened.

this will surely be a book i'm going to check out. and don't call me shirley. had to.

you realize that if stocks/the market is at 1996 levels, we have lost an entire decade of earnings. of course, those earnings were based on air/mirrors/smoke whatever. but an entire decade. wow.

anyway, got tons to do. seriously.

one horse town

this is an open letter to my body:

that's it body. you and me are finally on the same team. i know i've nurtured you and taken care of you. i took you to the beach and to the gym, where we turned you into something pretty sweet. but you know what i'm really talking about. it's not about those times to the beach or to the gym. it's about those times where i try to destroy you. you know those times, don't you? those times where i think i'm having fun and i think you can handle it, but then you and my brain get together and punish me like medieval times? those times?

well, that's it. no more. no mas. i'm turning in. throwin' in the white towel. laying down the flag. putting my sock in the air. that last one was an original of mine. that's right. i can't compete anymore. i finally realize that the last 9 years are finally over. the behavior i cherished and looked forward to is finally over. and the best part is, i'm ready. it should be over. it's time. i can't yell in people's faces anymore and expect them to be okay with it. i can't steal random objects from bars or people's houses and expect them to be okay with it. i certainly can't call people and speak in one unrecognizable syllable and expect them to understand me. but most of all, i can't get out of control and still be able to control the situation. that's the rub. the loss of control was the point from the very beginning. that's what it was about. losing control. not being responsible for what happened. not wanting to remember what happened. that was the main event. that's really why the whole thing started. you remember? you wanted to lose control. you wanted to do things you knew you shouldn't, but you sure wanted to, so you figured out a way to do them and feel okay about them. that was great. it was honestly, the most brilliant thing ever done on the planet. ever. and it worked. for a long time, it worked to perfection.

the thing is, though, it doesn't work anymore. and the reason it doesn't work anymore, is because i don't want to lose control. i don't want to do things that i shouldn't. i want to feel in control of everything. be responsible for the things i say and do. and no, it's not because i'm getting older and i'm married and all that crap. it's because i did it. and now, i'm done with it.

the best part of the weekend for me is sunday breakfast. i'll get up or my wife will, and we'll make breakfast and talk and watch our political shows. and then we'll go for a walk or go bike-riding. those things are why i work so hard during the week. it's to get to that moment. to experience a bowl of oatmeal with my wife on sunday morning. that's the whole thing. if i destroy myself, i don't get that moment. i don't the walk. i don't get the bike-ride. those things are robbed from me. and why are they robbed? because i thought it was more important to talk to someone about why the original star wars movie is better than empire strikes back until four in the morning. and it is by the way. look it up.

now body, i expect you to back me on this. i'm doing this for you. and my brain too, i guess. because his revenge is awful as well. but there will be times when i think the best way to relieve stress is whiskey and smoke. it's going to happen. so i'm going to need you to kick yourself whenever you feel that it's too strong. go ahead and kick yourself right in the ass. i won't mind. i'll then remember what's going on and right the ship.

but i'm writing this down today, so i can read it anytime i want. i can remember that this is what i want and this is what i need. this time, they're the same. it's going to be hard. but the reward will be more than enough. it's time to enjoy the whole thing in a different way.

i can't wait until sunday morning.

wilco, the album

june can't get here soon enough.

some days are better than others

today is not one of those days. are you ever convinced that you didn't sleep at all the night before? you know you did a little because you had a dream or something, but the rest of the night you remember lying there and thinking about why you can't sleep and how impossible it will be to ever go to sleep again? i had one of those nights.

the dow is having a great day too. it's getting close to buying season on the market. i still think we're in for 5,000 territory. i really think it's going to happen. that will be the signal to me that the market has bottomed out. i mean you could argue that we're there right now and i wouldn't tell you you were wrong. when the market loses half it's value in a year and a half, the bottom isn' too hard to see.

here are the world's most admired companies. not one of them is located on the island of grenada. i'm very disappointed in grenada. come on!

here's a history of our savings in the form of a graph.

it's liddy versus greenberg in the battle of most short-sighted incompetent ceo. AIG was basically supposed to insure the entire financial sector against a major economic downturn. turns out, they didn't deliver.

pitchfork reviews u2's new album. when i say "review" i should actually say destroys. that's probably more appropriate. i think u2 is just about done as far as being a cutting-edge band. in all honestly, i liked their last album, but it wasn't amazing. when you go back and listen to "the joshua tree," "achtung baby" and "zooropa" those albums are amazing. and then they stumbled big with "pop" and they really haven't recovered. it's time to pass the mantle to the next biggest band in the world: flight of the conchords.

here's the walkmen's website. check it out.

here come the astros

not really. this is going to be a long year for the home team. since it seems manny is going to sign with the dodgers, he's the last big piece to fall. and i watched an astros spring training game yesterday versus the braves and it was the greatest hour of the year thus far. so with all that being said, it's time for the 2009 baseball predictions. let's go:

National League
Central
1. Chicago Cubs
2. Cincinnati Reds
3. St. Louis Cardinals
4. Houston Astros
5. Milwaukee Brewers
6. Pittsburgh Pirates

East
1. New York Mets
2. Philadelphia Phillies*
3. Florida Marlins
4. Atlanta Braves
5. Washington Nationals

West
1. Arizona Diamondbacks
2. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. San Francisco Giants
4. Colorado Rockies
5. San Diego Padres

American League
Central
1. Minnesota Twins
2. Cleveland Indians
3. Detroit Tigers
4. Kansas City Royals
5. Chicago White Sox

East
1. Tampa Bay Rays
2. Boston Red Sox*
3. New York Yankees
4. Baltimore Orioles
5. Toronto Blue Jays

West
1. Anaheim Angels
2. Oakland Atheletics
3. Texas Rangers
4. Seattle Mariners

*denotes wild card selection

so that's it. yes, the reds will surprise some people this year. yes, the yankees will surprise everyone and finish third. c.c. is not big time. burnett will get hurt and a-roid is in for a long year. also, the twins will continue to mystify everyone and continue winning the central, while in the national league west, manny isn't enough to get the dodgers past the diamondbacks. i think those young kids are finally going to put it together this year. and the home team, well, fourth place isn't that bad when you look at the pitching staff. the only way the astros move up this year and finish second or third is if mike hampton and russ ortiz both become comeback players of the year, kaz matsui is actually healthy and michael bourn can get on base. otherwise, look for bogusevic, sutton and johnson to get a call-up later in the year.

162 games. i'm ready.

frosted ambassador

this is from mish:

"Dear Mr. President, With All Due Respect ....

Dear Mr. President, I read your New Era $3.6 Trillion Budget Proposal. I also listened to your speech Tuesday night. You made a great campaign speech. However, the campaign is over. You won. And the reason you won is you offered hope as well as a promise of change.
With all due respect Mr. President, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke are offering the same policies as President Bush and Secretary Paulson. Those policies are to bail out banks regardless of cost to taxpayers. Mr. President, it's hard enough to overlook Geithner's tax indiscretions. Mr. President, it is harder still. if not impossible, to ignore the fact that neither Geithner nor Bernanke saw this coming. Yet amazingly they are both cock sure of the solution. Even more amazing is the fact that solution changes every day.
With all due respect Mr. President, Geithner and Bernanke are a huge part of the problem, and no part of the solution and the sooner you realize that the better off this nation will be.
With all due respect Mr. President, your budget proposal is the same big government spending as we saw under President Bush. The only difference is you promised more spending and bigger government, while President Bush promised less government and less spending and failed to deliver on either count.With all due respect Mr. President, it is impossible to spend one's way out of a problem, when the problem is reckless spending.
With all due respect Mr. President, you and Congress want to force banks to lend when banks (by not lending) are acting responsibly for the first time in a decade. Mr, President can you please tell us who banks are supposed to lend to? Do we need any more Home Depots? Pizza Huts? Strip malls? Nail salons? Auto dealerships? What Mr. President? What? And why should banks be lending when unemployment is rising and lending risks right along with it?
With all due respect Mr. President, we were hoping your administration would not carry on the war mongering policies of your predecessor. Instead we see amazingly that you Seek $75.5 Billion More for Wars in 2009. Mr. President, do we really need another $75 billion for wars? Was there nothing in the military budget that could be cut?
With all due respect Mr. President, The United States spends more on its military budget than the next 45 highest spending countries in the world combined; The United States accounts for 48 percent of the world's total military spending; The United States spends on its military 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran. Isn't that enough Mr. President?
With all due respect Mr. President, the downfall of every great nation in history has been unsustainable military expansion. Mr. President, the US can no longer afford to be the world's policeman. You act as if we can. Mr. President, can you please tell us how we can afford this spending?
With all due respect Mr. President, Fannie Mae Reported A Fourth Quarter Loss Of $25.2 Billion. Can you please tell us where you draw the line on taxpayer bailouts of Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? AIG? Mr. President is there a line anywhere, on anything? If there is, we would appreciate knowing where it is.
With all due respect Mr. President, how can you talk about reducing the budget deficit while proposing the biggest budget in history?
With all due respect Mr. President, how is it possible to talk about reducing health care costs while proposing to increase the health care budget?
With all due respect Mr. President, you have talked about "hard choices". Can you please tell us what hard choices you have made other than to throw money at every problem? Sure a few programs have changed but Bush orchestrated the biggest Medicaid/Medicare package in history and you upped it. You upped military spending. You criticized McCain for cutting programs that amount to peanuts, and all you can find to cut out of the budget is peanuts.
With all due respect Mr. President, your "Era of New Responsibility" is nothing more than a continuation of the Bush administration Era of Irresponsibility. Mr. President, we hoped for more and deserved more. Yet, behind the charade of campaign messages of hope and change, we essentially see the same fiscal irresponsibility and misguided policies as before. Oh sure Mr. President, your budget priorities have shifted a bit, sadly the irresponsible spending did not."

it covers the hillside

i don't watch a lot of movies, but the ones i do, i select carefully. you won't find me watching eddie murphy in "daddy day care 11: the return of the fishsticks." i know that movie sucks and i'm not going to waste my time watching it. but even the ones i select carefully can be let downs, like the darjeeling limited. i was so excited to see it and it was awful. or the good shepherd. i actually saw that a long time ago and don't know why i thought of it, but i'm glad i did because it was awful too.

so it's great when you see a movie and the credits are running and you don't want to talk. you don't to say a word because that means it's over. this thing that you were experiencing is over and you have to let it go when you don't want to. we watched "into the wild" this past friday night and i could not leave that movie alone. it's the story of christopher mccandless a.k.a. "alexander supertramp." he's a young kid who's just graduated from college and he goes off on this adventure to find truth and meaning. the film is extremely inspiring and heartfelt. the kid really has no idea what he's doing, but everywhere he goes, he influences people in a positive way.

there's one quote that sticks with me from the movie: "happiness is only real when shared."

if you get a chance and you're watching the dark knight for the fourth time, put this movie on instead.

shelter from the storm

president obama gave a speech last night. here is the transcript. i've read through most of it and i agree with the assessment that recent ideological visions have favored short-term profits over long-term development. this is an american phenomenom. it wasn't just the goverment. it was all of us. but how do we fix our debt as people? we stop spending, we cut back. we try to earn more money from our employer, either through working overtime or getting an extra job. these same rules will have to apply to our government. they'll have to scale back spending or reallocate to satisfy spending needs. they'll have to raise more money, that means taxes. either that or print more money and debase the currency, which i don't think they'll do unless they have to. so i agree with obama about long-term planning, it's needed, it's necessary. but i don't understand how he's going to cut the decifit and give people a tax cut. i hope he can. i hope he's got something up his sleeve and is able to pull this off. i want to live in a country that has a plan again. that has a vision.

businessweek has a write-up of the speak and the main points and analysis. here it is.

charlie rose is at it again. here he is with morgan stanley's john mack.

ukraine's ratings cut by S&P.

mish on bernanke's hide and seek.

top 10 brands to invest in from yahoo finance.

michael cera is apparently on board for the arrested development movie. my dream is coming true.

here's a concert review of blitzen trapper in chicago. i love furr but it's slightly scattered. if those guys can focus on one sound, they're going to make some freakin' amazing albums. hopefully they come to texas, other than SXSW.

banking on a myth

risk. that's the measure. that's the key. how risky is something? if i make this bet, what are the chances of x,y,z happening? they have models for these things. but as i've said before, the outcome of a model is not always based in reality. the outcome could very well be logical, but practical, no. these models were behind the fall of long-term capital and they've been the reason so many people were surprised when their CDOs started falling. people actually think they can quantify risk. it's impossible. risk can be measured given all known inputs, but therein lies the fallacy, you cannot possibly include all unknown inputs. they're unknown! it's not impossible. so risk can be squeezed down to make you sleep better at night, but it's still there because you didn't factor in what would happen when these CDOs failed on top of all the credit default swaps that were lingering with them. i'm going off on this tangent because of this article. read it here. it's great.

so what is a credit default swap? real quick: let's say you want to bet on the yankees to win the world series but you're not sure they're going to win. so you bet five on the yankees and four on the astros. so i've collected nine dollars from you. now the yankees win. you want your five dollars. well i don't have it. because i took that nine dollars and only kept one. i invested the eight dollars in mortgage securities, which i can't sell now to cover the bet because they're worthless. on top of that, i used the mortgage securities to obtain loans using the mortgage securities as collateral. now the banks are calling in their loans because my collateral is worthless. so i owe for the yankees, i owe to the banks and the worst part is i took this bet for every person i know. i'm over-leveraged and have no means to pay back the credit default swap or the loans. that's what happened to AIG, Lehmans and Bear Stearns.

bill gross of pimco has some power. here he is answering questions.

apparently american express is paying people to pay off their balances.

the paths to repudiation.

a daily show clip is always worth mentioning.

robert smith is hating on radiohead. i've got two words for robert smith: less is more. dude, you're fifty. let's cut the pancake and teenage angst and let's start singing about early dinners and the weather channel. please.

murder in the city

"always remember there is nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name."
-the avett brothers