go to extremes

i think instead of using random song titles for each blog entry, i will now only use the song stylings of mr. william joel. cause every time i see "anthony's song (movin' out)," i get a smile on my face. and that's what william joel does best, he makes people smile and enjoy life. i was riding my bike the other day and "uptown girl" came on. i probably looked like the queerest dude in the neighborhood on my bike because i was riding with no hands and dancing while i was riding. it was a great moment that perfectly symbolized the shot used as credits roll at the end of a movie. it was that momentous.

i've complained publicly and privately about the quality of wilco's (jeff tweedy's) lyrics going downhill. here is a song though that is still lyrically exciting.

michael lewis was on charlie rose the other night. check it out here.

lots of big names give the best advice they ever got. my best advice: life is only as good as your last sandwich.

here's an interview with sonic youth on pitchfork. never been a big fan of their's, but i respect their creativity and longevity.

the two girls in front of me are talking how gross it is to have dead skin on your lips. they're going through how to get rid of it. one suggestion is putting lip balm on your lips when you go to bed. another is a thicker version of vasoline called aquafore (?). they're still going on about this. i went from downtown in the tunnel, where it's happening, to sitting here listening to this shit. i got to get back downtown.

now she's talking in armenian. wow. this is so brutal. i'm putting my headphones on.

anthony's song (movin' out)

we signed the lease. we're moving.

i have no idea how we'll put this off, but we will.

the ballad of el goodo

sammy sosa's name is apparently on the 2003 steroid list. this list is compiled of players who tested positive before baseball implemented its new, strict anti-performance enhancing drugs policy. first off, no shit sammy sosa's name is on there. that dude went from a scrawny kid from the d.r. to this behemoth in like a year. he went from hitting 10 home runs to hitting 60 in like two years. so that's no big surprise. what bothers me is the double standards in sports. if a guy gets caught using steroids in baseball, his career is over. just like that. no coming back. i mean jason giambi might be the lone exception. in football, guys take steroids and get suspended like shawn merrimen and almost win defensive player of the year awards. they don't get run out of the game. i don't understand that. also, what about this guy? donte stallworth is driving drunk and kills someone. he gets 30 days and he'll be back playing this year or the next. does that make sense to you? you take steroids, you're out forever. you kill someone, well, we'll let you back in after you serve time in your house. what the f?

what is going on iran? these people are pissed. i like their spirit. i like how the internet, meaning twitter and facebook, two simple web applications are being used to drive home their story and send images around the world. no dictator can stop that.

obama introduced sweeping financial reforms today. check it out here.

big star released number one record and radio city again. i'm not sure why. i don't think there's extra stuff on it and i don't think they've been remastered. but great stuff anyway.

randy, i still listen to burgers. i actually listen to it while i take a bath. i relax in some hot water and listen to burgers vols. 1 and 2. thanks again.

i had a stuffed snapper today that was heroic in taste and flavor. wow. i also had oatmeal. it was less tasty. but good for me.

iowa city adieu

this engagement is nice. it's in downtown and i've been eating lunch in the tunnel. the tunnel is great. although it has no bathrooms. seriously. not one.

oh yeah

a friend of mine sent this to me who works at fox sports. she said this aired yesterday during an angels game.

free ride

"free ride." can you believe it? i missed "free ride." one of the partners here has gotten wind that i'm a rock and roll encyclopedia and he's taken to asking me to name the group for each song that he names. and i missed free ride. anybody know it? it's the edgar winter group. yeah, i know. what the hell? i've gotten most of his questions, but he's found my soft spot which is late 60's, early 70's soul, groups like the spinners, the ohio players and billy preston. i'm not as familiar with that as i should be. free ride. damn.

there's all kind of stuff going on out there (iran elections, switch from analog to digital, and other stuff that i don't care about on a friday.

by the way, looks like we're moving again. i know, it never gets old, does it?

"If I am the one
Blood on the sofa
Blood in the sink
Blood in the trunk
High at the wheel of a bull black nova
And I’m sorry as a setting sun
This can’t be undone
This can’t be outrun"

what is going on with those lyrics? freakin' me out man. by the way, i had a sandwich today and i had the realization that a sandwich without mayonaisse is just a sandwich. mayonaisse actually makes the sandwich. it really does. cheese is optional. lettuce optional. i think these rules apply to a hamburger as well, but that has not been tested yet. further results may differ.

hoodoo voodoo

garn- st. germain depository institutions act.

depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act.

obviously these are just small wiki pages, but i haven't found more than that yet.

3 rounds and a sound

2nd post of the day.

i haven't posted from mish lately, but he's got a plan to save the fed's image. he has this because the fed is investing in actually improving their image. i think bernanke should shave his beard and start wearing stone-washed jordache.

here's more on fractional reserve lending and how it, and the fiat economy, are undermining our banking/financial institutions.

also, the real worry i have, besides massive infectious disease and deepening socio-economic divisions, is the great debt threat. it's coming if something isn't done and the worst thing is, to do something about it, is going to hurt. all of us.

they done wrong/we done wrong

another day, another swing in the move/won't move movement. after searching endlessly, we have one more place to see tonight. after tonight, if this place isn't the one, it's starting to feel like we're going to suck it up, pay the new rent rate and work feverishly to find jobs out of state before the end of our lease is up. that seems to be the new game plan. although the game plan is constantly evolving. the game plan like ten minutes ago was to move to arizona and raise komodo dragons. but that game plan is already gone. see, they move quick.

i had a quick epiphany last night. my wife was supposed to cook some chicken for us for lunch, but due to her mom calling and unleashing more of her middle-aged drama, she didn't get a chance to do it. but i brought it up how the chicken would go bad if she didn't cook it because it had already thawed out and was just sitting in the fridge. so she trudged downstairs, upset, and went to cook it. now this is about 10:15p.m. when this happened. now usually, i as the husband who never forgets and always has the nightly outline laid out and signed off on, would have continued to lay in bed and read for my CPA test. but this time, it flashed in front of my eyes. she's going down there to do this for me. she didn't forget because she was lazy or watching television. she forgot because she's always dealing with her mom's crap and she became upset about her mom and therefore forgot. don't punish her. the punishment of an irresponsible, immature mother is enough. so i grabbed a book (a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by david eggers) and i went downstairs with her and read to her while she cooked. she loves when i read to her. it's these little breakthroughs that i hope to continue to have that keep my marriage a successful, happy one. it not always easy hearing about her family and how they're always purposefully butchering their lives, but it's not her fault.

sweet leaf tea is the best.

here is a quick scene from the office where jim dresses as dwight in the cold open and dwight repays the favor in the close. check it out. it's actually very funny when seen onscreen:

Jim: [Dressed as Dwight] It's kind of blurry. [puts on his glasses] That's better. [exhales] Question. What kind of bear is best?
Dwight: That's a ridiculous question.
Jim: False. Black bear.
Dwight: Well that's debatable. There are basically two schools of thought---
Jim: Fact. Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Dwight: Bears do not--- What is going on--- What are you doing?!

Dwight: [walks in dressed as Jim] Pam.
Pam: Hey, Dwight. You look really nice today.
Dwight: [scoffs] Pssssh. I look like an idiot. Hey Karen.
Karen: Hey, Dwight, lookin' sharp.
Dwight: Yeah, that's cause I'm... you're boyfriend, Jim Halpert. Hey, Karen, wanna get t-together later and have sexual intercourse cause you're my girlfriend?
Jim: Do you?
Karen: No.
Jim: OK.
Karen: I'm good. Thanks.
Jim: [Dwight imitates the "Jim face"] Look at that.
Dwight: I'm Jim Halpert. [more horrible "Jim faces"]
Jim: Spot on.
Dwight: Ah-luh-luh, a little comment. Muh.

foux da fa fa

having lunch with a friend is great. get out of the office, have some laughs. very good monday thus far.

we're going to look at two different properties today and tomorrow. i haven't mentioned this before, but it looks like we might be moving. we'll still be here in houston, but our lease is up and our landlord is being a little bit crazy in her approach to negotiating. so we've taken it upon ourselves to begin searching for a new place. i think we might have found one that we're going to see tonight. moving will be a major bitch, but by moving we'll be sticking it to the landlord and her "chance to make some money" will turn into her financial black hole.

foux da fa fa.

as jon stewart helped to point out when he pantsed jim cramer a few months back, financial television is a mess. bloomberg television is actually pretty good, but the beast in question is CNBC, which had the market cornered for financial/business news and still leads the market by quite a bit. i have no numbers, but i can tell from the coverage on blogs/websites. this guy has 16 suggestions on how to fix it and most of them are pretty good.

the federal government's money is being spent too slow apparently, which i didn't think was possible. but obama says speed it up. he wants to create 600,000 jobs by the end of this summer. when compared to the 10% of the workforce out of work, that's really nothing, but it's a start.

top 10 housing markets for the next 10 years. i've looked at fort collins. looked at it, i haven't visited it. but i can see it from my house.

so did the government get it right by not buying bad assets before with TARP money?

if you have a macy's card, apparently that's one of the worst credit cards to have in the world. the world! but also if you have a macy's card, you're probably in love with yourself or hate yourself. this is all true. so here's some really bad credit cards to have.

love and mercy

love and mercy.

two weeks

yes, grizzly bear is blowing my mind. they actually have a song on the dark is the night compilation album called deep blue sea and it's amazing. the national have a song on there too that's incredible.

david carradine is dead. i had never seen him in anything until kill bill, which i thought he was strangely calm and unnerving. his superman speech is great.

this is nice: a worrier's guide to economic recovery. after all these months of pessisism (sp?), could we really be coming out of it? can i believe yet?

because then you read something like this that says rising interest on the world's debts will continue to sap growth.

look at this prius!! it gets 50 mpg! that's incredible!!! wow. i want one.

kicking television

did anyone catch the entire "earth 2100" last night? i only caught the last 45 minutes of it. i'm going to try and find it on the web and watch the whole thing. it deals with the possible environmental ramifications of our actions if we do not accept that our current way of life is unsustainable. i've been making this joke lately that my mom and other baby boomers don't really appreciate, but at least they laugh. the baby boomers experienced the most perfect period of life on this planet. they were raised during u.s. dominance and they matured and grew older when stocks were high, land was cheap and medicine was advancing. they could run their air conditioners all day and they could drive their inefficient cars as much as they wanted. but that period is ending. and the aftermath will fall on us.

i have no scientific data to back this up. but i'm not an idiot. i've seen changes in my life. i've seen the choices we have made about how we live, work and surround ourselves with exploits of life. so i wonder, what will change during my lifetime? i wonder if world leaders are determined enough/smart enough to really get a handle on the seriousness of the situation. do they understand what raising sea levels will be like? do they really understand how fast disease will spread when changing temperatures allow it to permeate and breed much more easier in areas where it used to be uncommon? do they understand that globalization will end overnight if our infrastructure is challenged and compromised? and it really wouldn't take much for that to happen.

one of the reasons i want to leave houston so bad is because i would love to live in a city where a car is not a necessity. i dream of the idea of waking up, grabbing a book and hopping on a train and reading the whole way to work, or listening to a new album. it would make my life so much easier and cheaper and also help the environment around me. i see all these condos going up inside the loop here in houston and i wonder, how do they plan on moving all these people around? cause each high-rise will have about 100-200 tenants and each one of those people will get into their car and drive to work everyday. they have no choice.

we've taken "the old ways" and we've industrialized them. what happens when we have to go back to the old ways? we'll have to have a garden and grow our own crops and possibly raise our own animals to eat. and think of all the advancements that have been stored in some electronic database that will be lost. it all seems so pointless when you think about it in these terms. why did we advance ourselves to the point where we ended our civilization?

and i'm not saying these things as a means of scare-mongering. this is real stuff. our actions have consequences. our choices have consequences. we never realized we were partners with the earth and maybe we never will. but the earth knows we're just renting from her. and she'll evict us eventually if we don't change. i know we have the technology to do this. but do we have the stomach? it's got to be our generation that mandates these changes, otherwise, when we're 70, we won't recognize the world around us.

so what changes can you make right now around you? well not big ones. but you can change your light bulbs. you can insulate your house and install thicker windows that don't leak. you can grow a garden. you can ride your bike or take the bus/train/lightrail if you can. i know in texas that's not easy/plausible. you can use re-usable bags instead of plastic bags. you can turn down your water heater a few degrees and maybe your a/c too. that's also not easy in texas summers. i don't have any grand ideas for your everday life. those will have to come from somewhere else. but imagine a world where your car is electric and you drive to work/home and you plug into something like a carport that is outfitted with solar polars that are used to recharge your car. those are the kinds of ideas we need to get behind.

anyway, i just think our lives will be so much simpler when we do make this leap. our generation will experience the worst. we'll have to work out the kinks and pay the highest prices for this change-over. i'm ready to do it. i can't wait to see it.

the good part

apparently this song is on the war on war single. the good part. check it out. it's a little tasty tune.

what is the deal with this jon and kate make eight or something? who are these people? i had never heard of them until like two weeks ago and now everywhere i go, i see their faces or i'm staring at their pictures in line at the grocery store. did these people have eight babies and they were given a tv show? is that what's happening here? man, i really want to punch these people in the leg. like real hard for interferring in my life. i also had gone this long without hearing that old scottish woman sing until last night when my wife had on the jimmy kimmel show and she was singing. i was proud of myself for going this long without hearing her. it's not that she's bad, it's just that i do not appreciate cultural phenoms thrust down my throat. or hot pizza bagels.

here is an important piece of journalism...can white women and black women get along. i thought oprah was bringing all the women together. oprah has let me down.

during the summertime, the avclub does reviews of old classic television shows while the real shows are on hiatus. newsradio is one of them. it's in my top five of all-time sitcoms/television comedies which are numbered as such:

1. arrested development
2. seinfeld
3. newsradio
4. the simpsons
5. cheers

number six would be out of this world.

"would you like to swing on a star, oh oh oh, carry meanbeams home in a jar, oh oh oh, and be better off than you are, oh oh oh, or would you rather go to earth?"

deep blue sea

it's already a big day. GM filed for bankruptcy. that is huge. GM was one of those pillars of american business. you had coca-cola, johnson and johnson and stuff like that. GM was in that bunch. now it's gone, owned by the government. also, a freaking plane disappeared over the atlantic. apparently it ran into some lightening and freaking disappeared.

more than two people read this blog. i stand corrected. by christmas of 2011, this blog will be seen by four to four point five people. aim high.

pretty good article from the new york times about banks digging in their heels against regulations even when the business they were trying to protect was disintergrating.

the new republic does a write-up on arianna huffington. it's not pretty. she has a website called the huffington post, which i use from time to time for stories on this blog.

this guy has ideas about how to spend stimulus money. like instead of spending it on parking lots or signs for blind people, we can spend it on outfitting our buildings/homes/public arenas with green appliances/techonology.

i saw the wrestler this weekend. and while it was a great movie, because i used to get really into wrestling and kind of followed some of the guys careers and my cousin wrestled in humble for quite a while, the story was a little predictable to me. but the performance of mickey rourke was outstanding. he was great. i think everyone should check it out.

cuddly toy

ever heard of the "smell test"? i'm sure you have. somebody tells you something and you think, that sounds like bullshit. your friends do it, your family does it. everybody does it, but not everybody implements the smell test. it's very important you do. because smelling bullshit can be a great and powerful tool in your life. everytime one of these banks comes out with its quarterly report and claims big profits, i think, that smells like shit. and it is. it's accounting tricks. it's hiding liabilities. it's all make believe and they're doing it for short-term profits and public perception. but what they miss is that no one, no one is going to invest in a bank where they use accounting trickery, especially if they get burned twice. and long term, these institutions will fail because, quite simply, we won't have anymore money to bail them out with.

remember when i was saying how oil will balloon once this depression ends and we'll be faced with another oil spike? well the depression isn't even over and has anyone else noticed how much gas keeps creeping up? here is a profile of dave hughes, another peak oil believer. in 2030, i'll only be 50. if i make it to 2050, i'll be 70. those last years could be really depressing if we don't figure a way out of this.

what is with these huge chinese basketball players? i mean really? 7'6'! that's outstanding. how are they growing these dudes?

we still don't know what killed jay bennett and this guy doesn't want to know.

the avclub did a list of the worst book to movie adaptations. i've seen some of these and some were actually pretty good, but this list focuses on the author's hatred for the movie.

i'm trying my hardest, but i just don't get what's so great about the kings of leon. the only two people who read this blog, love that band. i'm trying guys. i'm trying.

yoshimi battles the pink robots

i had to post this today. i've been giving lance zierlein a hard time because he's 39 and he's talking about nintendo being a part of his generation. if you don't know who he is, he's a radio host on a morning sports show here in houston. i love the show and also he has a blog on chron.com where he posts things. so i went after him. here is the exchange (these posts occurred throughout the day, you can read them here):

kevin: your generation is the nintendo generation? seriously. you had a spirograph for ten years and when that little baby wore out, you moved on to your jordache stone-washed jeans phase and your slap-bracelets. come on!

lance: Nintendo. RBI, Punchout, Contra. Come on, fool.

kevin: dude, you're 39, so you were 17 when RBI baseball and punchout came out. sorry lance, that is past your generation. by that time, you should have been making time with the cheerleaders and not at home figuring out how to beat soda popinski.
come on, fool.

lance: "Making time with the cheerleaders"??? Who are you - Bing Crosby? My generation played past the age of 18. We went from Nintendo to Sega to Playstation to PS2 and beyond. In college we played basketball, went to class, went out drinking, came back late and night and gambled on Double Dribble or Golf. That's how we did it.

kevin: when bing crosby wasn't making time with the cheerleaders or singing christmas ballads with david bowie, he was beating his kids with a bag full of brass door knobs, not playing ninja gaiden and figuring out the power glove. if there was a game where you got drunk and verbally assaulted people, bing would have commanded that game. he would have known the code for extra lives and beaten fred savage's little half-wit brother and bing would have been crowned the wizard.

lance: Best of the day.

we'll miss you jay

jay bennett died yesterday. he was only 45 years old. i'd just written about that dude and how much i miss him in my favorite band, wilco. i'd read something one time that said he'd been in something like nine car accidents and evidently he was about to have hip replacement surgery because of a fall from a concert back when he was with titantic love affair. he smoked like a fiend too. but man, 45 is young. i started wondering about jay bennett's place and it bothered me that no one would ever really remember him like me, how even though wilco was jeff's band, jay brought jeff's songs to life. but i got an email from bruce saying how he thought summerteeth was wilco's best album. and that made me think that there were plenty more people out there that loved summerteeth and maybe they didn't know why or maybe yankee hotel foxtrot was their favorite record or maybe they thought wilco wasn't the same after yankee hotel foxtrot. those people might not know the name "jay bennett" but without knowing his name or anything about him, they listened and they heard jay bennett. and that's what is important. jay brought to life "being there," "summerteeth," and "yankee hotel foxtrot." and for that, his place in rock history is secure by me.

i read this article yesterday and it blew me away. it's not really an article, but a group of some guys i've been reading lately: niall ferguson, paul krugman, nouriel roubini and others sitting around discussing the way to economic recovery. they actually might not be sitting around, they be on the phone or standing up, but anyway, it's a great read. i actually tried to print it out, but i ran out of ink. i hate ink.

america and argentina: quite similar when you look back.

i hope everyone enjoys their day today.

airline to heaven

it's been a while. i haven't really been doing anything. i've been going to the gym. that's right, i'm huge. muscles on top of muscles. actually i'm starting to wonder how good my body produces muscle, that maybe my body type (frame) won't allow me to hold mass. because i'm lifting the same, if not more, than some ripped dudes in the gym, but i don't look like them. my lanky muscles are squandering my hopes for a chiseled frame.

anyway, you ever heard of an economist called "dr. doom"? well his name is nouriel roubini and i've mentioned him a few times on this blog. here's a write-up about the guy.

so which country holds the most debt as a percentage of GDP? you'd probably guess the united states. you'd be wrong. way wrong. the reason: as a percentage of GDP. in terms of fiscal dollars, yeah, we're holding a lot of debt, but as a percentage of our GDP, we're not in the top ten.

are we finally at a point where suburbia is being questioned? well, high-end suburbia anyway.

england's debt gets downgraded and now we're worried about the same thing happening to us.

i hope everyone enjoys their weekend. i'll be seeing some friends, here and there. take it easy.

el scorcho

i am really jonesing over two bands lately: blind pilot and white rabbits. blind pilot just did a hearya session and they sound amazing. they're totally live on those recordings. they sound incredible. tanner's been all over this band for a while now and i've recently succumb to how good they are. something about those live sessions really bring out these amazing pure sounds and the vocals are totally inspired. the other band is white rabbits. their new album was produced by britt daniel, of spoon fame. anyway, i've only heard the opening track gun percussion and it's great. the album came out today and i'm assuming the hype machine will have more tracks soon. i've been digging some camera obscura lately too.

so i finally purchased these books i've been waiting to buy. one of them is lords of finance by liaquat ahamed. here is an article where he has lunch and says stuff. check it out.

"catacomb, catacomb, be my security." i have no idea what that means, but i can't get it out of my head.

here is an interview with myron scholes who wrote the rules on financial risk with the black-scholes model. i certainly love the photo used. this guy is a financial genius, even though his theory was relied on too heavily, proving major cracks in the logic, but this picture, it looks like he's starring in a sitcom on abc TGIF after full house.

naill ferguson's always good for a reality check. here he is telling us we live in a land of diminished returns and excess regulation is unnecessary.

"catacomb, catacomb, be my security."

california is out of control and dealing with major budget issues, like passing one.