This is a short one, as much an inquiry to readers as it is a post.  If you’ve read the chapter, “Sudden Asshole Syndrome” in HHIFA, you’ve seen my friend “Alex” and I dissect “dicks,” “douchebags,” “pricks,” “cocksuckers,” “scumbags,” “assholes” and even the British variant of “cunts.”

One form of rodent’s missing, and it’s the type who vex us most.  Walk through your day in your mind, naming the species of every irritant you encounter.  Seven out of ten will be “tools.”  They’re ubiquitous.  Any office, any room, with more than a dozen people has at least one tool in attendance.  And try as you might to avoid him, the son of a bitch will find you.  He’ll seek you out, corner you, infect whatever it is you’re doing… irritate, infuriate, drive you to the edge of violence – talking about nothing, needling, whining and inflicting his views on your person.  God help you if you work with the bastard, or worse yet, he’s in your department.  You’ll dream of choking him purple, of leaping over the conference table and crushing his larynx like a walnut… Saving the rest of the race from enduring another moment of this nails-on-blackboard personality, with its pointless, needless interjections, its niggling irrelevant critiques and persistent failure to notice that Nobody Wants to Listen to Anything It Has to Say.

But where do these creatures come from?  What defines them, makes them what they are?  You know one when you see one, of course.  But there has to be a common tether, some shared form of dysfunction that binds all tools together.

I looked for that link when I was writing HHIFA. Researched the issue for weeks, because to write about office malfunctions, one has to address the tool.  He sits at the base of most problems in every corporate structure in the country.  Attrition, delay, low morale – the tool’s been involved somehow.  Infighting, disruption, malpractice  – his fingerprints are in there somewhere.  But it’s rarely ever direct.  The tool works more like a cancer, sabotaging from within while appearing utterly harmless.  And the harrowing thing about these organisms is the probable lack of intent.  Observe the tool in nature and you’ll know, he rarely realizes what he’s doing.

Which is exactly why my research came up blank.  I couldn’t pin a profile on the tool, and then it struck me… That’s his defense.  He’s everywhere and nowehere at once, the Keyser Soze of corporate malignancies.  In the interest of actually, finally answering the question, “How do you define a tool?” below are a few interviews I took which were included in an early draft of the book.  Maybe they flesh the animal out.  Maybe not.  Maybe you can do better.  I’m all ears.*

Harris.  Latex dynasty heir, Analyst.  Washington DC.

H:        “A tool bothers you.  Their chief attribute is being annoying.”

PL:      “Anybody can be annoying.  Douchebags are annoying.”

H:         “Yeh, but a douchebag’s a real flagrant dickhead, and kind of a buffoon.  A tool’s aggravating, but not that over the top.”

PL:      “That’s a fine line.  How does a tool compare to an asshole, then?”

H:         “Assholes are usually directly irritating.  A tool’s mostly indirect.  But I guess tools could be a passive aggressive subset of asshole.”

PL:      “But isn’t that really a prick?”

H:         “No.  A prick’s in your face.  A tool’s annoying even when he’s not being a tool to you.  It’s more a state of being than any specific behavior.  Listening to a tool talk to someone else can be annoying.  They’re like really bad karaoke.  You feel like you have to leave the room.”

Donika: Literary Editor, Enabler.  New York City.

D:        “The best way to describe a tool is lack of authenticity.  I hate to define them in relation to nerds, but the two are so frequently confused I kind of have to…  A nerd knows he’s not cool and does his own thing.  A tool is trying to be something.  He’s a geek who thinks he’s really fucking cool, or is trying to be.  Does that make sense?”

PL:      “What do you think a tool’s trying to be?”

D:        “I don’t know.  I don’t think the tool knows.  Whatever he’s not?  They kind of lack a real identity.  You never know what you’re getting with a tool.  They shift to fit the moment and they don’t leave anything to show where they’re coming from.”

PL:      “Like what?”

D:        “Like anything.  Nerds tend to be a creative types.  They build things.  A tool’s more a critic.  He tears things down to make himself feel better.”

Les:  Society gadfly, Investor.  Washington D.C.

L:         “Tools don’t ‘play’ the game.  They believe in it… buy into it.”

PL:      “How so?”

L:         “They miss the bigger picture.  They fight battles, not wars.  And they always have to be right.”

PL:      “You mixed two things there.”

L:         “No I didn’t.  They’ve always got something to prove, just within a very narrow game.  They live in a really small universe, and they love office politics.”

Alex:  Performance Artist, Acquisition Specialist.  Left Coast.

A:        “Chet.  Chet from Weird Science.”

PL:      “Anthony Michael Hall’s character or the other guy?  And weren’t they both nerds?”

A:        “No.  Chet was the older brother.  Who the fuck played him?  Shit.  Give me a second…  Bill Paxton.  Bill Paxton’s character.”

PL:      “Chet wasn’t a tool.  Chet was a dick.  Classic, archetypical dick.”

A:        “When was the last time you watched the movie?”

PL:      “Few years ago I think.”

A:        “Do you recall Chet getting any ass?”

PL:      “No.”

A:        “Exactly.  He picks on the nerds and then when the computerized super-chick shows up…  What was her name?”

PL:      “Kelly LeBrock.”

A:        “Nice.  Anyway, when she shows up, Chet shits himself.  He can’t handle her.”

PL:      “Chet’s a meathead.  He’s not a tool.”

A:        “Chet gets no action, has no friends and hangs around the house, in hunting gear, beating on a couple geeks.  Chet’s a fucking tool.”

_______________________

*If we get enough funny and insightful responses, we’ll throw them into a follow-up piece.  Either way. I’ll be diligent about getting the comments up fast to keep any discussion building to what will hopefully be a complete definition.

Author’s Note: I recently found a file of outtakes from Happy Hour.  This one’s a conversation from a bar, discussing career management, and why in all but a few circumstances, “vice” and “routine” are antonyms.

______________________

“I don’t see how you can’t drink every night.”  Martin looked perplexed.

“Do it every day and you can’t get drunk anymore.”  I stubbed a smoke out in the last of the mussels. “If I have a bunch of these after a couple days off, I’m stung – professional grade loaded.” I held the glass of Stoli in the air, shaking the ice cubes.

“I need a Jim Beam and Coke when I get home.” Martin signaled the bartender. “Have one and you’ll have two.  Two and it’s three and–”

“And so it’ll go.”

“The waitress, red hair…” He gave me the elbow. “Serious rack.”

“Push up bra.”

“Let a man dream.”

“You know why they wear black skirts?”

“Slimming.  No shit.”

“Look a whole lot different in white.”

“I can suspend disbelief.”

“I wreck.  It’s my thing.”

“Four, though… Four’s the line.”

“The line?”

“Never more than four bourbon and Cokes… On a weeknight.”

“Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve nothing against drinking every night.  I go on runs, months at a time.  But I try not to.”

“It isn’t the healthiest–”

“That isn’t it.”

“You’re a gym guy.”

“You think that’s about health?”  I picked the spent filter up from the plate. “Vanity.  That’s what that is.”

“You’re practically hitched.”

“It’s terminal.”

“Monogamy…”

“Vanity.”

“Honest for the shallow… give you that.”

“How are those exclusive?”

“What was the point?”

“Why not drink every night.”

“Why not?”

“Agreed.”

“Well, then that’s settled.”

“Wait — I meant — …I need a Red Bull.”

“And people pay for your advice…”

“It’s simple. You know how if you drink a lot Thursday, you can’t get drunk Friday?”

“I can get drunk Friday.  I get drunk Saturday, Sunday–”

“Yeh, but you can’t get really drunk…”  I waved at the redhead. “You know, damaged.  Buzz gets weaker every day you sauce.”

“Commitment.”

“Commitment?”

“You versus the tolerance.” Martin fired back the last of his drink, an excuse to bring the waitress back again. “Beat it.”

“You never get as ripped like you’d been sober a few days. Push it all you like — you can’t lose your mind.”

“Madness.”

“You’re shitty.”

“Irrelevant.”

“If it’s routine, it’s a job.  If it’s a job, it’s not a release.  No release, where’s the holiday?”

“Wherever I’m sitting…” His voice trailed into the noise. Martin knew the point, but the ass on another waitress passing was five, six times more important.  Always is.  I lit another smoke and scanned the bar.

No use in debating the issue.  Martin had been an advocate of sustained, daily escape as far back as our college days.  Baking was the standard prescription, but in the past few months, as his job had turned to just shy of torment, he added an IV of Beam to the mix.

This made all the difference, of course, because liquor’s a far meaner poison, at least on a consistent daily level. Millions of people smoke pot before, during and after work every day.  And if you consider the extent to which it keeps a whole lot of them from drinking, a vice that kills a worker’s next day production, the government should more than legalize it.  If “[T]he business of America is business,” and the Republic needs us fixated on dreck sixty, eighty hours a week to keep the rocks rolling up the mountains, Uncle Sam needs to rethink his “Drug War”… Subsidize huge Turkish hookahs for every corporate suite in the country.

No one would work!  Our economy’d collapse overnight!

This is what many might be thinking.  But that would be undeserved props, because that isn’t thinking at all.  See, our economy’s already fucked.  The Market’s a gentrified dog track, this housing thing’s crashing like a stone, and the only thing we build here is Debt. Why?  Because nobody likes what they do.

It isn’t the stress; it’s the Boredom.  Slogging ‘round the cracker factory’s torture.  And it’s all near equally vacant.  Butcher, baker, credit default swap creator – work in the same trade every day and you’ll soon forget you’re alive.

But what the hell else can we do? If you can’t take that yoke of boredom, some other duller suit will, and that son of bitch’ll lap you. What’s the solution there?

Get out of our heads at the office.  Seriously, why the hell not?  Half the people there are already on anti-depressants. If we all smoked a lot more pot, there’d be much less employee turnover. When you’re stoned, angst’s an abstract concept, disgust too harsh to consider and stifled ambition too disturbing. You shove them miles out of your head, focus on your fractal screen savers… The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of the Place” – the song you hum every morning in the hall – is traded for “Oye Como Va.”  Suddenly work isn’t so bad.  You write some stuff, read some stuff, talk about nothing with some people and then they give you a check.  You go home, bake some more, watch TV, fall asleep, wake up and do it again.

If only I could have persisted in something like that routine.  I’d have probably made managing partner.

Hot damn… Another lovely week in this glorious year of the Lord, Two Thousand and Ten. The market’s coughing back all its gains, the jobless rate ticks to 10.1 and the latest ISM Survey has the service sector barely growing.  The hot money’s racing overseas, the President’s got nothing but promises and our Congress only cares for re-election.  $100 million in new AIG bonuses, populists howling for trade wars and everybody’s holding their breath… “What happens later this year, when home buyer tax credit’s gone?”

I don’t know and I don’t care.  The best one can do is ride the waves, pray for some grand swell underneath, an unseen sudden surge, blasting us Up from nowhere – a new and monstrous Bubble gifted us straight from God.

But I’m not a man of religion, and I’m seeing few silver linings.  And neither are you, I assume, or you wouldn’t be here, reading this.  So rather than dwell on the Ugly, let’s talk cars once more.  Because really, what’s more nostalgic – a better flashback to the Booms, and a better symbol of Escape – than a $500,000 Porsche that does 100 miles per hour in just over three and a half seconds?

____________________________

I’ve been told the Benz and the BMW are good cars, but Porsche is a whole other level in terms of both performance and durability. But I’ve heard this mostly from Porsche owners who seem to enjoy feeling superior to BMW and Benz owners. Agree?

Rosie: This brings me to a short rant about how amazingly stupid people are… Especially when it comes to an inability to distinguish the fact that two different hood ornaments on the exact same car do not amount to to different cars… But hey if VW and Porsche want to tear a page from the Camaro/TransAm play book, more power to them. A Porsche is a Volkswagen, granted so is a Veyron, but at least the Veyron has the decency to look like something other than a stretched VW bug. Of all of them, I’m probably most fond of the 2002ish M5. I though the car had understated good looks and one quick trip to Dinan and you had yourself something that would upset your neigbor with the Carrera 4, badly.

DK: It’s true. The older, air-cooled cars especially, are built like tanks. The interiors are kind of crude, but the engines use air to cool themselves, rather than water, so they don’t get traditional overheating problems, and they sound like Satan’s flatulence. They are also not easy to drive. The 1980’s Porsche turbo was known as the “lawyer killer”, because 300 horsepower, turbocharging (which gives you a very snappy power delivery), and primitive, VW-Beetle based underpinings are a handful for even the best driver.

Autoproficianado: It’s not just the owners.  It is a better car.  I’ve never been part of the “I’m better than you because I have (insert car/watch/black card)” crowd.  Those guys have issues and also a script for whale cock-derived penis enhancement pills.  By the way… Did you see this automotive press release when Dartz, the builder of the Russian SUV with the whale penis interior, realized they offended Pamela Anderson?  We all know how much Euro-Russian trash loves some Hep-C blonde Canadians. Classic…

ARMORED CAR WITHOUT PENIS. LET’S SAVE THE WHALES.

One month ago DARTZ presented uberluxury armored car with whale penis interior – PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBaltique), lot of people name this car as DARTZ.KOMBAT. As the world’s resonance was very huge and DARTZ got lot of angry e-mails from Greenpeace, WWF and also Pamela Anderson, DARTZ make strong decision to stop their plans regarding such interior.

“We have no any ideas to kill the whale or something like that. All we want – to make just luxury car. Real luxury car which will be world number one car. Our brand was started at 1869 when in Riga was opened Coach Factory or Russo Baltiysky Vagonnij Zavod – PBVZ, and first products was luxury train coaches. At 1907 was made a decision to open Car Department, and at 1909 first car left factory – the name of this car was RussoBalt. This was luxury and sport cars. At 1911 specially for Monaco Rally car got french style name – RussoBaltique. At 1912 factory made world first 4 x 4 wheel drive car, and at 1914 – armored car. All we want to unite luxury and armoring traditions of RussoBalt factory in one car, which brand celebrated 100 years now. At 1922 RussoBalt was renamed to PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBalt).

We just looking for most expensive products for this car – and that’s why we choosed whale penis leathure when we checked it is most of most. After wave of protest we realised our mistake and make a decision not to use natural leathure at all. We will focus on world most advanced nanotechnologies to achieve interior highest quality using artificial materials which also was never used for cars. We want to tell our hello to all whales: “Our Sea Brothers! We all know that earth are stand on three whales – we will keep You live! We don’t Earth fall down to Ocean!”

Also we make a decision to pay more attention to glass and on our new car model we will use glass which will be made by special technology – from artificial grown chrystals, which will be gold sputerred to cut IR and UV rays, which make driving inconvinient when sun shine.

Best regards,

DARTZ.EU

Leonard F. Yankelovich

(Being that the other guys were talking about it, I had to throw this in there)

If you could have one Porsche, which would it be?

Autoproficianado: This is harder than the top three.  There is no true answer.  The “all-time” contenders would be: 959, Carrera GT, 917/30, 1994 911 Turbo S factory Slant nose, 993 Turbo S, 996 GT3…

In today’s offerings I’m really digging the Cayman S with the PDK.  I also like the Panamera S (RWD sedan!) and love the GTS Cayenne (I’m not that into turbo engines). The upcoming 997.5 GT3 RS should be hot.  I also dig the Euro only 911 Sports Classic.  Cake.

DK: As for my favorites; in my head, I know a brand new 997 GT3 is probably the best Porsche so far, but emotionally, I have to say that the last 993 Turbo, the last of the old school, air-cooled “true Porsches” is what I’d really want. But deep down, I know that my skill as a driver would match up with something like a base Boxster.

Rosie: 917/30. The baddest, most powerful sports racing car ever built. (Yes, “Period“.)  Mark Donahue was once asked if the car had too much power and Donahue was purported to say “A race car has enough power when you can spin the rear tires, in top gear, at the end of the longest straightaway.” This car was the vehicular end to the ’60s just as Altamont was the end of the ’60’s for hippie culture. Porsche came to the freespirited, the-only-rule-is-there-ain’t-no-rules Can-Am series and beat everyone so badly that the series folded. This car was Thompson’s high water mark in the desert.

Let me beat on Benz for a second. I drove a small Benz CLK convertible around a bit last year and I thought it was a piece of crap. The comparable Audi seems a much better vehicle in terms of handling, comfort and overall quality. Is Benz still suffering from its past “Chrysler-ization”? If so, does the cheapness extend to all models or just the lower end stuff? I remember the S Class doors on the ‘80s Benz sedans felt like bank vault doors. Is the S Class still maintaining that quality?

Autoproficianado: Ah, Chrysler… planned obsolescence.  GLK meet Jeep Commander.  R-Class meet Pacifica.  S-Class meet dollar store quality chrome plastic grill.  I mentioned taint licking a bit back and this brand is right up there.  There’s a reason why thirty year old diesel Mercedes-Benzes are still running and seven year old ones aren’t.  They suck.  If Audi made this kind of crap over the last 15 years they’d be dead.  Mercedes-Benz is lucky to have its branding strength.  The legacy of being the best car money could buy.  There was a time for that.  But it’s over.  Mercedes-Benz is a taxi cab in Europe.  It’s a joke.  But I have to give it to them.  They sell a $200,000 CL65.  It’s just a coupe.  It’s not a supercar.  People buy it because it’s a Mercedes-Benz.  BMW, Audi and Lexus can’t do that off their brand image.  The S-Class hasn’t been a real car since the S420.  It’s plastic, cheap and boring.  A lot of guys love their S63s, and it’s not a bad car, but the S-class just isn’t what it used to be.

DK: I don’t know if it’s “Chrysler-ization” as much as there was a big arms race between the luxury manufacturers to cram as much technology and gadgets into a car as possible, which resulted in a reliability meltdown. Audi stayed free from this with the A8, and while it was never popular, anyone who knew about cars would tell you that the A8 was a standout car. This is where the Germans lost a lot of ground to Lexus as well. When the LS400 came out, that S-Class was still built like a tank, but the gizmos were creeping in. The next generation, around 1999, the car got more expensive, and everything became computerized, the styling was a little less Germanic, and the lack of good electronics meant everything went bust. I mention Lexus because a lot of people got tired of having to bring their car into the shop every few weeks when the windows wouldn’t roll up, so they bought the cheaper, but still prestigious LS430, which was just as quiet, roomy and powerful, for a lot less money. BMW also managed to stay free of these gremlins, even with the radical new 2003 7-series, but that car is a different animal altogether.

The newest S-Class has rebounded spectacularly in terms of quality. It really is a world-standard car again. But I’d still take an A8. I think the new S-Class looks too much like a Hyundai. But those AMG cars with the big block V8s are mean as fuck.

Now, as much as I like Audis, having driven BMWs, I find the Audi’s handling a bit disconnected from the road. I like the feeling BMW gives that you’re actually connected to the pavement. Does Audi make a vehicle that handles in a comparable fashion? Why is Porsche the only actually-purchasable car that provides that feel?

Autoproficianado: I’m a HUGE Audi guy.  I’ve driven all of them.  I’ve had 3.  If Audi was to be compared to my anatomy it would be my dick I love it that much.  They’re a whale of a good time.  (OK, I’m jumping the shark with that one).  In truth, only the Audi RS cars give you great steering feel (RS4 and the non-US RS6).  Their S and S-Line (sports package) cars aren’t that bad.  But Porsche really is the best and there just isn’t a comparison.  The only car in the BMW line up I would take is the upcoming M1 or the current 135i.  This is a proper bimmer akin to its predecessor, the first M3 (E30).  The current M3, M5, M6, X5 M and X6 M (the X6 being the dumbest vehicle BMW ever made) are all too heavy and lack any soul.  A Porsche is always a Porsche.  Its engineering starts at the steering wheel.  Even their Cayenne SUV and Panamera sedan feel like a Porsche.  What’s the difference between a Porcupine and a 911?  The prick’s on the inside…  But to anyone saying that the Porsche is a VW, drive one.  I’d take a GTS Cayenne over the Audi Q7 over the VW Twat-rag (Sorry, Touareg) any day.

DK: Audi has always been handicapped by pedestrian Volkswagen underpinings. They are mostly front wheel drive, until the tires lose grip and the AWD kicks in. But they’ve taken huge strides, and have totally revamped their lineup to be more BMW like, with nicer interiors and aggressive styling. For the first time, the BMW 5-series, which is considered the best sedan in the world, bar none, is getting beaten by the Audi A6, that only a few years ago, was described by a journalist as “like driving a car with square tires”. The new S4 and S5 are true muscle cars, with great handling to boot, and the R8 is certainly the hottest car right now, as well as a revelation for supercars. I’d say they’ve made a total 180 degree turn with their lineup, and they’re finally being accepted as an equal to BMW, rather than Acura.

Rosie?

Rosie: I skipped the last questions because I’m not terribly impressed with an of the premium luxury cars. In my mind a luxury car should ride and feel like a ‘66 DeVille. I just don’t have much to add. I have limited seat time in Audis but I was flat knocked out by their commitment to winning LeMans over and over again by pushing the envelope and doing things right every time. I don’t know that it transfers into anything on the street other than the RS6, but then again, the RS6 drew a lot of water…

But as to that unique BMW ride you mentioned, my wife owned a 2000 E46 convertible and two of my friends own E36 M3s. Both of those friends are (or were) professional racing drivers and still drive their ‘99 M3’s nearly every day. I have a shit-ton of laps around the track in both cars, and have driven one of them off road in an almond orchard somewhere outside Bakersfield .  Until about two weeks ago, however, I’d never driven one on the street. Within a day of doing so, I happened to also drive a 1999 C5 Corvette (with an automatic transmission). Now, the M3 had a 153 thousand miles on it. It had race compound DOT street tires, improved struts and springs and it was fitted with whatever you call “Monte Carlo Bars” when they’re not attached to a Mustang. The ‘Vette was my father’s car and I have to stipulate that every car my father has ever owned looks like he stores it at the wet end of a salt water boat ramp. And, if I recall correctly, I think the car competed in the 2002 running of the Fabulous Mint 400…

Anyhow, with those qualifiers in place, I will say that for pure sports car performance, handling, braking and acceleration, the M3 felt like it completely owned the Vette. I was surprised because I’ve been in a few Z06s that would turn your nut hairs white they run so hard. I’m blaming a lot of that on the auto transmission and also the overall build quality of the M3 versus the Vette. The automatic in the Vette is the same transmission that motivates such performance luminaries as the Chevrolet Suburban and, of course, it’s harder edged sibling, the GMC Suburban… And it feels like it. Transmission lag in the Vette would put the 930 Porsche’s infamous doctor-killing turbo lag to shame. Fortunately, the Vette is so ponderously overweighted and slow that it’s impossible to be caught by surprise with some sort of unexpected rush of performance. On the other hand, the M3 accelerated sharply (considering it’s an inline six that’s a pretty big compliment). The handling was tight and precise. The fit and finish of the car was still very well composed. Especially in light of the fact that at least 50,000 miles of its 153k miles were spent at the threshold, on the race track (And that doesn’t even consider the fact that I had removed the entire plastic nose undertray while trying to replicate the gravel stage of the rally in the aforementioned orchard. Ari Vatanen, I’m not).

However, when measuring sports/touring car performance there is one critical metric in which Vette absolutely destroyed the M3… Not looking like a social climbing jerk-off. Nobody in a Corvette has ever been accused of being yuppie scum. White trash, maybe. Erectile dysfunctional, perhaps.  But never a yuppie. This was validated when I drove the Vette up PCH on a Saturday afternoon. People I passed smiled and waved at me. Two different, bona fide California bikini girls told me they liked “my” car as I was waiting at a traffic light. Other Vette owners gave me the high sign as I passed. Could you imagine an M3 owner waiving to another M3 owner based solely on the premise that they’re both driving and obviously fond of the same kind of car!? Fuck no. And frankly, for people who actually know haw to drive them, isn’t not looking like a yuppie douchebag what owning a serious performance car is all about?

One person in this group has outrun the police in a high speed chase. (Guess.) You’re being chased by the cops. What car do you want? And no, you can’t say “a truck” and change the hypo to allow yourself to go off road. You’re on a windy, desolate rural highway and the cop has the traditional V8 sedan with the big block engine and the special handling suspension.

Autoproficianado: Only one person?  The typical police car is the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.  This car has an electronically limited top speed (Model year 2006 and on) of 120mph.  It’s loaded with batteries and other police gear.  Most sports cars can get away from it.  You’ll want a car that can do about 150mph.  Most police won’t chase you at speeds in excess of 120mph even if they’re in an unmarked Camaro or Mustang that can go faster.  They like to live too.  NJ happens to have a no pursuit rule.  So, it does matter where you’re being chased.  This leads me to my next point: The answer is not a supercar… I know, sad right?  What would be more thrilling than dusting the cops in a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SV?  A good part of getting away is blending in.  If you’re driving a super car they’ll find you.  You can’t outrun the radio if you’re going to be spotted by every citizen with a cell phone or every cop in the state.  Also, if you’re driving a European car in the sticks you’ll be found later as well.  But who drives in the south anyways?  The movie Ronin made the right choice.  They chose an understated, powerful, AWD sedan; the S8.  If you’re in an all wheel drive car and it’s raining, snowing or you’re driving aggressively in the bends you’ll have better grip than the rear wheel drive cop car.  As much as I’d like an RS4 for this, it’s a little loud.  The S6 and S8 are limited production and although subdued you’ll never see another one on the road to blend in with.  My choice: the BMW 335i xi sedan with a manual and in silver.  It’s not the best AWD or the fastest car in the world but it’ll do 150mph.  It handles and there are loads of them on the road.  If you do end up getting caught (down the road when you’ve returned to normal speeds) it’s a better defense to be driving a common car than if you’re driving a McLaren.  Or maybe I’m wrong and the best thing is not having your license plate identified… and in that case it’s the Bugatti Veyron.  SEE YA!

DK: I usually think about this in the context of the city, where discretion is key. So a Pontiac G8 with the V8 engine would be perfect, especially in biege. But on a rural road, it’s different. I’ll say this; most police cars are slow. The Ford Crown Victorias in particular, are not fast at all, their V8s are pretty anemic and the handling package isn’t all that great either. Even something like a V8 Dodge Charger can be outrun by a V6 Camry (theoretically).

The new Nissan GTR would be my pick. It’s not the most exciting car to drive, but it is one of the fastest, and it will never let you get caught out. The grip of the AWD and the amazing suspension mean that you can rape anybody short of Michael Schumacher, no matter what the weather, road surface or opposing car is. You would literally need a Ferrari Enzo or a Bugatti Veyron to match its performance. I drove a GTR recently, that had been bumped up to 650 horsepower, and let me tell you – the phrase “I nearly shit my pants” is now a horrible cliche, but it was entirely appropriate for this car. Not only would the cop not be able to catch you, he would have no idea where the fuck you went.

Rosie: I guess if a trophy truck is off limits I probably can’t ask for a Bell 222 or a 40 Skater with a pair of 1,600hp Sterlings, huh? OK, if I’m required  to stay on the pavement, then I really see only one logical choice… The Yamaha R1. You have to have the chops and the balls to run it as hard as it can run, but if you’ve got the goods so does the R1. It has brutal acceleration, otherworldly brakes… and it’s small enough to hide behind a dumpster until the heat blows over.

Let me guess… Jim Beam?

“Cheap beer, Cuervo 1800 and Rumple Minze (to make my breath smell nice).”

Simple title, simple thrust.  This is the first of a two part series on cars.

They’re the setting of so much else I’ve written – so many bare knuckle moments, frantic idiot runs with no destination in mind.  Hardly surprising, of course. Cars are our every concept of freedom crafted into pistons and gears.  When the walls close in as they do, your car’s your only escape – a three thousand pound metal tribute to the notion of Running Away – “Midnight Rambler” at eleven, highway laid out ahead.  And even if it’s just your commute, a respite, a fantasy, that yes, if the day came where you gave up and snapped – if spending one more moment on the treadmill seemed a fate worse than terminal cancer – you could gas the motherfucker up, point it down the nearest open road and vanish into the Horizon.

Yes, I love cars. I’ve owned at least dozen in my life, and I’ve driven everywhere, all the time, even when I didn’t have to.  But I’ve never discussed them here, at least in depth.  Never mentioned any dream cars – what I’d buy if I won the Powerball.

That’s a shame, and it needs to be remedied.  And considering we’re in the midst of a depression, what better time to discuss exotic sport coupes and 1.5 million dollar SUVs with gold plated windows and their own private supply of ultra exclusive vodka?  Seriously – you haven’t tested the capabilities of any respectable SUV until you’ve taken the bastard four-wheeling in a snowstorm on three or four shakers’ worth of Red Bull and vodka…  windows open, for proper communing with nature.

But enough about the night I got the truck hung up in that Nativity Scene (the AA classes are bad enough).  Here it is, a blue ribbon round table on, simply, Cars.

____________________

• Derek Kreindler is an automotive journalist based in Toronto.  His work can be seen at various online outlets, and at his blog, Rich Corinthian Leather. Derek is fortunate enough to have driven everything from a Ford Escort to a 650 horsepower Nissan GTR.

• “Rosie Palmer”…  Well, I asked Rosie for an intro. This is what I received:

In addition to being a life long motor sports enthusiast and a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Major Saul Kellerman was the first Jew in space. The Major is currently on administrative leave from NASA pending the conclusion of an investigation surrounding unauthorized use of “zero gravity foot power” in the Discovery hangar (he assures us he was “out of town when that shit went down”).  In his free time, he enjoys his collection of pre-war Indy cars and Bonsai farming. Major Kellerman is also socially conscious, the founder of several charity organizations dedicated to freeing “political prisoners” Ben Kramer and Randy Lanier.

Readers of the comments and a few pieces from the past might recognize Rosie under a different name.  Readers of Happy Hour might know him from this description:

[O]ne of those rare personalities that defies simple definition – a huge, hulking freak, equal parts menacing and absurd and one of those strange minds who could be the smartest and dumbest person in the room at once… a violent force of nature – reckless, monstrous, unbridled by boundaries of money, time, distance or common sense, the sort of lunatic who’d start the weekend at the corner pub and end it two states away, penniless, wandering around a hotel with nothing but “How?” in his head.

That was a sketch from a time and place long past, what almost feels like a lifetime ago. But even now, yes – Rosie’s foot remains on the gas.  He races cars.  And in the right set of circumstances, just about anything else with an engine in it.

• “Autoproficianado” is a car lover who’s spent his entire career in the automotive industry, much of it in exotic vehicle market. He’s worked in several different positions in the field, along the way gaining knowledge on buyers, market trends and the nuts and bolts of the machines most people only dream about owning.

____________________

To start it off, let’s have the conversation about dream cars. You can have any three vehicles on the world, any year model. Which do you go with?

DK: I’ve always hated this question, from the time I was three and people asked me “what’s your favorite car.” I never have an answer, because there’s too many. Most people gravitate towards sports cars or expensive luxury cars (and no doubt, I do too), but I have a lot of oddball choices. I like the Volkswagen Phaeton because it’s one of the finest cars ever made that nobody knows about (or would recognize). I like the Citroen DS because it’s still technologically advanced despite being made in 1959. Hell, I drive a Mazda Miata, which brings up all sorts of shit-talking from my friends (but car people know it’s the best sports car this side of a Porsche 911).

Rosie: As you know, I’m largely an American car guy. Big loud and shiny. It’s basically my measure of anything I consume. It can be cars, girls, food or booze… It’s got t0 be big, loud and shiny. I mean hell, I drive a lifted F250 diesel crew cab on a long haul commute in infamously bad California traffic. That said, I do have some personality quirks (defects) that push me to be somewhat inconsistent in my tastes (the Per Jouet/MD 20/20 night at the beach, for example). So my choices are kind of all over the road, so to speak. Anyhow, enjoy my efforts to make myself look stupid…

1. 1988 Nissan GTP ZX-Turbo (either the Lola 810 based car or the Trevor Harris revised car). I want to say the Mazda 787B LeMans winner, with its sexy and otherworldly 4 rotor Wankel engine. You know Wankel dreamed the basic combustion cycle for that engine while he was asleep. Maybe it’s the mushrooms, but man, that really freaks me out. That said, the Nissan is a sentimental favorite of mine.

2. Hard not to pick that Russian SUV with the whale cock interior… I’m just sayin’… (Although I will admit that the thought of sitting on a whale penis is a bit, um fruity… but hey if you’re going to go fruity, might as well be a size queen!)

3. OK, I know… I know… I’ve got to be a good guy and pick one “real’ car that I would actually drive around, huh? Shelby Cobra. A 427 car. I know the “purists” will claim that the 289 car built the racing history but the 427 car is too much of everything, which as Bob Weir will tell you, is just enough… If you don’t already own a Cobra, then it has to be on your wish list, otherwise your penis will fall off (I’m starting to see some sort of theme here, I guess I shouldn’t have watched that John Waters stand-up special last night).

4. Since that second choice was clearly a fraud, I’ll give you my third choice. One problem, my third choice is a tie between two different cars… I’m making a mockery of this already aren’t I? Anyhow, the opening sequence of Cannonball Run should put the Lamborghini Countach LP5000S on anyone’s top three list. The sound of the motor, the over the top looks, Adrienne Barbeau’s enormous breasts… It’s on my list and I don’t give a crap if I have to park it in my living room and just look at it because it doesn’t run. The other car is a car I fell in love with as a kid. It oozes style, Americana and Elvis driving from the back while his pet monkey rides in the driver’s seat… It’s the 1958 Eldorado Biarritz. From the stainless steel roof to the “space age” jet intake trim on the sides, nothing says we dropped to A-bombs on your ass like the top of the line ‘58 Caddy.

Autoproficianado:

1. McLaren F1 LM

2. McLaren F1 GTR 1995

3. McLaren F1 GT

No other car appreciates in value while you’re driving it.  Economically, if you can buy one it will never cost you anything.  They only made 106 in different variants and it was made in an era where CAFÉ (emissions regulations) and DOT safety requirements (ABS, Airbags and electronic driver aids which add weight and take from the driving experience) didn’t limit what type of car you could build.  The driving dynamics are uncompromised.  A manufacturer couldn’t build one today if they wanted to.  You can’t get one.  They’re just not for sale.  If someone would sell it to you, you’d be lucky to get it for 5 million dollars today.  That number will continue to rise exponentially over time.  It’ll be worth 10 million dollars in 2015; I promise you.  The car does at least 231mph.  It’s made of carbon fiber, Kevlar, magnesium and gold foil.  It looks like a space ship under the skin.  Today’s supercars don’t use some of the technology these guys were using 20 years ago.  It’s got the doors, looks, performance and exclusivity of the quintessential supercar.  It’s a three seater with the driver’s seat in the center position and a passenger seat on either side.  The car is so awesome that you can drive it with your wife in one seat and your girlfriend in the other and both of them are cool with it.  They’ll blow you as you warp past the 200mph club.  They’ll have to, it gives that much wood.  It is my unicorn.  I want one like a Christmas puppy.

Three others that touch my heart and cause me to grow in the pants:

Dodge Viper 1998 GT2 GTS-R – The coolest of American muscle cars

Bugatti 1939 57C Van Vooren – The most beautiful car ever built

Bentley Continental SC – This cars’ got it like stacks and hoes.  Pimp.

I understand people buying exotic sports cars, but one thing that’s always baffled me is why people buy things like Bentleys or Rolls Royces. Aside from the “I have fuck you money” cachet, what do these cars offer that one can’t find in an Audi W12 or a Benz 600?

DK: Once upon a time, buying a Bentley or a Rolls Royce actually meant something. Literally everything was bespoke, they weren’t gaudy (Bentley didn’t even advertise their horsepower until recently, merely stating it was “adequate”.) Kings and statesmen were chauffeured in a Rolls Royce, while rogue gentlemen types with too much money and time drove Bentleys – and they were monsters. Now they’re based on BMWs and even Volkswagens (in the case of the Bentley). The Bentley Continental is the same as an Audi A8 W12 and the Volkswagen Phaeton.

But buying a German car used to be a true exercise in “fuck you” money. Before the 190E, or 0 down $299 a month deals on a C230, a Benz came only in a sedan, with a black interior, vinyl seats and a diesel engine (0-60 time estimated at 20 seconds) with a 4-speed manual. And it cost more than a loaded Lincoln or Cadillac (back when Cadillac meant something, too). So really, buying a Mercedes wasn’t a rational decision, it was a “fuck you I’m rich and have avant-garde tastes” purchase. BMWs were something else; some magazine writers declared that BMW’s were the finest driving machines available, and people bought into it. Then, like Rolex (which makes good, rugged, but not overly sophisticated watches) they became a yuppie status symbol, and cars like the E30 came out, which were little more than race cars and too raw for the L.A. law set – they bought the 318i, debadged of course.

Rosie: The only guys I know who own Bentleys are Armenian pimps and MMA fighters… I suppose you could extrapolate what you will from that… There’s an element of perverse criminality that’s drawn to those cars. Any time you see a fat, old, white guy driving one rest assured that he made his fortune the old fashioned way;  white collar crime.

Autoproficianado: Most exotic sports car owners don’t even know how to drive their cars.  Half of these guys just want to have the prestige.  It’s amazing what you can put a Ferrari badge on that sells. Ferrari socks, really?  This idea of prestige goes for Bentley and Rolls-Royce owners too.

Bentley and Rolls-Royce are great cars, however.  Bentley offers a Continental GT Coupe and it’s a sports car.  The base GT is 550hp, AWD and at 100 mph it feels like you’re standing still.  It has grip for days and the passing power on the highway is unbelievable.  The SuperSports version at 621hp competes with a 911 turbo.  It’s ridiculous for a 5,000 lb car to do 0-60 in 3.7 seconds.  The Rolls-Royce is remarkably quiet, smooth and comfortable.  There’s nothing like it.  Where Maybach is just an oversized S-Class from Mercedes-Benz, the Rolls-Royce is an experience.  The interior is so quiet you feel like you’re in space.  This feeling is complimented by their starlight LED headliner.  There’s nothing cooler than coach doors that close themselves.  The engineering that goes into their umbrellas is uncompromising.  The car is so solid and the suspension so compliant that when your driver hits speed bumps at 40mph your champagne won’t spill from your RR engraved crystal glasses.  The attention to detail, the hides and grain are so luxurious that it’s like wearing a tux.  It just feels good.  Other good feelings come from the ample space to be taken advantage of in the back.

OK.  No one needs one.

People buy these for status but also because they’re bored with being “Strivers Class.”  It’s been said a man is only as loyal as his options.  When a guy gets to the point where he believes that everyone has a 911 Turbo he needs something else.  If people didn’t feel that way then boutique car companies like Spyker and Pagani wouldn’t exist. 

Let me narrow the focus a bit. A lot of lawyers read this site, and lawyers like to buy the upper middle class status cars – Lexus, Benz, Audi, BMW, Porsche. What would you say are the best cars in the “striver’s class” vehicle demographic – say, between $40k and $100k?

Rosie: OK, I’m actually going to try to field this one seriously because I’m sick of watching people who only make a hundred or hundred and a half a year piss away their salaries on an A6 that frankly won’t impress anyone this side of an under aged Mexican car-jacker. The people who live in the “striver’s” demographic aren’t going to buy the best car in their price range so it doesn’t really matter what you tell them to buy. Personally, the G8 GXP and the CTS-V would be my choices, because they’re American cars and they’ve got the goods. Buying these cars funds those grandparents that put you though law school’s pensions. And don’t  you think you owe them a bit more that referring to them as “quaint” or “deceased”? Additionally, they’re great cars. Flat out better cars than any of the Lexis, BMWs or Infiniti that I’ve driven. I guess, if I was going to do everyone a favor, I’d strongly endorse the AMG C63 to every last “striver” I could get my hands on. The car is a rocket ship and the vast majority of these people will break their asses in no time. And let’s face it, wouldn’t the world be a better place with less of the type of people who buy C Class Mercedes?

And while I’m on my bully pulpit, I want to make one thing virtually clear. Adult men don’t drive 3 Series BMWs (M3 coupes excepted). And adult men don’t drive Convertibles unless they’re made by Cadillac or Lincoln and unless they were built before 1973. I hope people are taking notes, because this is Important. Nothing says “my life didn’t turn out quite the way I expected” like a 35 year old guy in a 330i.

Autoproficianado: The answer is Porsche.  Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW and (unfortunately held in the same esteem) Lexus are all competing with each other.  The Porsche is in a different league.  The steering feel, handling, performance and quality can’t even be compared to in the same breath as the others.  If you’re “striving” and you buy a Lexus, BMW, Mercedes-Benz or Audi you’re not really setting yourself apart from anyone else.  You’re just competing.  With a Porsche you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on custom options and even get leather on your a/c vents.  The other brands don’t offer that level of bespoke.

The best of each brand available today:

Audi- NO, not the R8 V10.  It’s over 100K (get the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 instead if you’ve got the bread) and you can’t get the Q7 V12 TDI (Turbo diesel) OR the RS6 in the states.  The RS5 is not out yet and they don’t make the RS4 anymore…I guess I can’t eat the cake right now so I’d take the S5.  It’s sexy and the first real coupe Audi’s offered in decades.

BMW – 135i or upcoming 1 Series M.  It’s light, small and fun.

Mercedes-Benz – G55 (A low mileage used 2009 barely makes the cut at 99K or less). I actually like something offered by Mercedes-Benz and it’s this car.  It’s Mercedes-Benz at its best.  The truck is 30yrs old. They stuck the biggest motor they could into it.  It’s a big obnoxious heavy box like all the other Mercedes-Benz’s.  It’s stupid.  But hey, it chirps in 2^nd gear and for that I love it.

Lexus – I hate every car they make.  I hate them like I hate Ferrari.  Oh, by the way.  FUCK FERRARI.

What would you say are the ultimate sucker cars in that demographic, the ones people overspend on for status, but aren’t worth near the sticker price? I want to know who I can smugly feel superior to in the parking garage (besides the guys driving top end Range Rovers).

DK: Well, for starters, any Land Rover or Range Rover is a piece of shit. They were once good cars that you could take deep into the bogs and moors of England , go hunting, then take your wife to the theatre in them. Now they have grilles that look like an electric razor, abysmal reliability, and are driven by people who feel threatened by the Mercedes G-Wagen; which is also a military vehicle, originally developed for the Shah of Iran and used by a lot of armed forces, but they swaddled it in leather and wood and people pay $100,000 for a truck that’s no good in urban conditions

The biggest sucker cars are ragtop sports cars, that weren’t designed as ragtops to begin with. So the Boxster, which everyone dumps on, is actually a dynamically superior car to the 911 Cabriolet. The engine is better placed, it’s a lighter car, and it’s been braced significantly to compensate for the rigidity that’s lost when you remove a car’s hard roof. You will regularly see people taking their Boxsters to the track. The 911 droptop is a total poseur car, and the BMW M3 Cabriolet is even worse. They are always driven by douchebags or trophy wives, and always automatic.

Rosie: The top tier Japanese luxury cars. Quality is perception only. Depreciation rivals that of American cars. Ride quality is poor and the greatest performance improvement they’ve come up with is the eccentrically shaped throttle body actuator which makes it feel like the car is accelerating rapidly at low speed by opening the throttle in a nonlinear fashion. If I ever want to die in a fiery inferno, I’m going out like Richard Pryor, not in a Toyota with an ECU that says “HAL 9000” on it…

Because I try to avoid driving these cars, I don’t have a lot to go on here. So I tagged in a friend of mine who’s an FIA GT series race engineer in Finland to get the dope. He stated, unequivocally that any modern Ferrari is a sucker’s bet, a car for people with little knowledge of exotics… An experiment that usually ends after that one failed attempt to be a “high roller.”

As an aside, I have a good friend who bought a Porsche GT3RS last year. He’s since returned it to Porsche under California ’s Lemon Law. The car was a pile of crap that began using oil at just over 1,000 miles. The dealer and the factory treated him very poorly. On of my favorite comments he made to me during the process was “Thank god I didn’t sell my Ferrari.” You know what they say about opinions and assholes…

Autoproficianado: The answer is any Lexus.  More than the BS “Let’s put the same absurd 6.3 V8 engine in every one of our cars!” AMG series Mercedes-Benzes.  More than the M brand BMWs that are fat pigs.  BMW hasn’t put out a good M car since the Euro E30 or the E36 lightweight.  Lexus just sucks taint in the most BDSM way possible.  Now, within Porsche, the sucker car is the 911 Carrera.  For less money one should buy the Cayman S and they’ll have a MUCH better Porsche.  The base 911 is a total sucker car and is solely bought due to status.  Lexus is really a Toyota.  It’s not “like” a Toyota.  It is a Toyota.  No manufacturer rebadges a car worse (outside of the US).  They’re boring to drive.  Everything is fake: the wood, faux tanned leathers, “aluminum” trim etc.  What’s the difference between a Camry and an IS250?  Not a thing, except for the 32% markup.  Suckers… We all know Lexus didn’t help the Nazis kill Jews but that’s not a good enough reason for anyone to buy one.  If one has an apprehension against buying German they should get a Cadillac CTS-V and be American.  Recall the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Before anyone mentions the LF-A,  it’s $400,000!  For a Lexus!  That’s more messed up the Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

To be continued.

How to sum up the 2000s?  Well…

It started out in a vacuum, the space left by an implosion.  The tech boom of the Nineties was fading.  The last straw was a Judge up in Washington, ruling Microsoft ought to be broken.  That was April, and it was more than the market could take. Five trillion dollars in wealth, disappeared with the sagging universal recognition it had no business existing in the first place. “The metrics are all different now!” “Dow 36,000!” “P/E ratios mean nothing!” The profits would never cease.  The Internet would change all the math. Only it didn’t.  Because in 95% of the cases, there wasn’t any revenue behind it.  Just a whole lot of neat business models and people talking “paradigm shifts.”

Then we had the election.  We argued and debated and nobody knew what to do.  Nobody knew who’d run the country.  Some judges saw it one way, some another, and then a bunch of really powerful ones stepped in and picked a winner.  They came up with a logic for the ruling, offered some tortured explanations.  But nobody really bought it.  The decision was basically a coin flip, and though the judges labored hard to give it heft, that’s how it’ll always be remembered.  Not much of anything behind it.

Next came September 11^th, which seemed to change the whole world.  Everything got tactile for a while, a re-assessment kicked in. That, of course, passed in a flash.  The President told us to spend.  Run off to Disneyworld, Forget.  Crank up the engine of consumption!  A boom will bring the country back!  We agreed and opened our wallets.  But not really.  We didn’t have any money.  So we borrowed and spent someone else’s.

The first war followed soon after that.  We chased bin Laden way up into the hills, dropped bombs all over Tora Bora. The news gave us constant updates – how we were closing in on Osama, how our jets bombarded the mountains and a Coalition pitched in to help, because madmen like Al Queda… Well, they didn’t have any allies. Then, somehow, bin Laden got away, and everybody pretty much forgot about what was going on in those hills.  Press didn’t bother much.  Rebuilding’s an interesting story, but it takes an attention span to watch. Not much in ratings behind that.

Besides, by this point, we were too busy spending to watch any news on TV. We’d just started emerging from a recession.  Unfortunately, the recovery was jobless. Luckily, that didn’t matter.  A bunch of politicians a few years before had decided everyone ought to have a home, even if they couldn’t afford one, and that the government should back all the loans.  In turn, a bunch of bankers gave all sorts of money to all sorts of home buyers, and sold all kinds of securities in their mortgages to people far, far away, a lot of them in Iceland and Finland. This brought the banks more money, to make all kinds of interesting loans to just about every kind of American who ever wanted a home.  As that happened, millions of people who used to make money going to work started making money buying and selling houses, or borrowing against the value of their own, which kept going higher and higher. And we kept doing as the President told us. Spent and spent some more. Because everybody knew, unlike that Internet boom, there were real revenue streams behind this one. Housing prices never go down.

While we were flexing all our equity lines, the President decided we needed another war. He argued that Iraq had “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and that Saddam was a dire threat. The skeptics among us called bullshit, but half of us were pretty damn sure he had something to do with 9/11. Those people vote more than the skeptics, and the cost of being wrong on one side outweighed being wrong on the other, so most Senators and Congressmen agreed with the people who wanted Saddam gone. Colin Powell went to the U.N. and held up pictures of those weapons of mass destruction and based on all of that evidence, we invaded a little while later.  This time, however, we couldn’t get a Coalition built.  The rest of the countries looked at the pictures and listened to our argument, and they didn’t see much behind it.

There was another election in 2004.  We hadn’t found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the war had gone very badly, but the people who were sure those weapons existed showed up to vote as they do, and the President got another term.  A lot of other people figured he’d lose.  Democrats were angry and Michael Moore had put out a movie exposing how he’d stolen the 2000 election and lied us into Iraq. Problem was, the more people examined the film, the more they noticed Moore had fudged a lot – that half of its conclusions were fiction.

But a nation divided on politics can still hold much else in common.  Like reality television. We fell in love with the O.C. and The Hills and it was all so awesome because, like, it was different and better than, like, every show that ever came before.  And it was real.  Except for how it wasn’t – how it was scripted.

Back on the political side, after it got crushed in 2006, the GOP started purging all of its RINOs, Libertarians and Rockefeller Republicans, reconnecting with its moral majority – the salt of the earth, God-fearing base of the party. This seemed like a really good idea.  Until a number of politicians who were part of that new moral base got busted for sexting young men, sleeping with their donors’ wives and soliciting oral sex in airport bathroom stalls.

As all this was going on, the unthinkable happened – houses stopped rising in value.  And worse than that, all the people who couldn’t afford them stopped paying for them.  This caused a panic in the banks, and not just from the cruel recognition that a person lacking any source of income can’t afford to pay on a mortgage. Though they’d passed on the risk of those loans to those people in Iceland and Finland, the banks were also acting as insurers. To make a bit more money on the notes they’d securitized and sold, they agreed that if the borrowers defaulted, they’d step in and pick up the tab. This was an excellent idea and it worked except for one little problem – lack of money to pay. Unlike an insurer’s guarantee, the banks had no reserves for that behind them.

We all freaked out a bit when the Treasury asked for $700 billion dollars to prop all the big banks up, but not too much. Twitter’d come along by this point, on top of Facebook, which had taken over from Myspace.  “Social media” they called it, and it was the next huge thing. We got it on our IPhones, like texts, and it was going to revolutionize all of our communication, how every type of business was done. “Web 2.0,” making every man his own advertising agency, creating a whole new base of customers for everyone on it.  And now Twitter’s got a hundred million users, Facebook’s valued in the billions, and these social media platforms are filled with all kinds of really social people telling all the other people how those sites are the key to our future… How they can blow up a business overnight, make it an instant sensation. But there’s this one nagging question no one asks – a lot like some I heard in the Nineties: How does Facebook make money? Where’s the revenue behind it?

But I don’t think about that a lot.  I’m a glass is half full kind of guy, and luckily, the decade ended on a high note.  We got a President of Hope and Change.  He said he’d fix our health care problems – make it so everybody who didn’t have insurance got it, and all the people who had it got their treatment a whole lot cheaper. So now, after the Senators and Congressmen did their fighting, and all the insurance companies lost the battle to stop it, we’re going to get Reform. Everybody’s going to receive more and better care.  Only issue is that cost-cutting thing, because as lots of suspicious sorts predicted, if you look really close at the bills, there isn’t much in savings behind them.

That’s alright, though, because China keeps buying our bonds, which lets us buy tons and tons of health care, along with anything else we might want.  The Chinese are a money juggernaut, with eight percent growth every year.  Just look at the economic numbers their official apparatchiks put out. And things there are only getting bigger. Their real estate market’s red hot and millions and millions of people who never had houses before are borrowing from the big state banks, buying up all the construction builders can’t erect fast enough.  They’ve got a trillion in stimulus money to keep that run-up rolling, and even if foreign demand’s collapsing, they’re still the world’s manufacturing center. With a billion people in the country, they can always just trade among themselves. China could never, ever go down.

And the stock market over here’s hot. With all of those earnings reports, and the banks back standing on their feet, it feels a lot like 1999. The talking heads on the finance networks are calling it a paradigm shift – that we’re emerging from a long malaise. One man in a bold striped suit said that the rally is just now beginning, and we’re headed for Dow 15,000.  I guess he knows a lot more than me, and I certainly hope that he’s right.  But again I have a couple questions.  These profits have all come from cost cuts, unemployment’s going to reach 12%, and I can’t shake this déjà vu feeling we’ve been through this run-up before… And that we’ll go through it faster, more extremely and more often for the rest of our lives. Different drivers, winners and losers, but the same essential governing gravity – that there won’t be much of anything behind it.

The best way I can sum this decade?  It isn’t easy drawing an absence.  The only description that fits is “A whole lot of crazy, important stuff happened.” But not really.

“Let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how? I mean funny? like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you?” – Tommy DeVito, Goodfellas (1989)

I was in law school, on Christmas break, and Uncle Donnie was around.  He always visited on the holidays.  In this case, brought by some cousins.  The extended family was quite so, scattered around the country.  Many had other obligations, different places to be, with different in laws to see in different cities and states.  My folks’ house was a central location, so the varying collections of relatives passed through in staggered sessions.  Six, seven days in total – Christmas in counterparts.

“We ought to keep him.”

“Enough.” My mother fought with the hors d’oevres.

“Dress him in a tux, like Odd Job–”

“Like what?”

“The Chinese guy from the James Bond thing.”

“Goldfinger,” Katie fixed a drink.

“Right.”

“I know. And you need help.”

“He could answer the door, serve cocktails… He can garden.”

“It’s not funny.” Mom felt the need to play the heavy.

Uncle Donnie sat in the dining room, staring through a plate glass window, blinking every now and again. a spacy gaze on his face like “Reverend Jim” from Taxi.

“I think he could work the pencil moustache.”

“Make yourself useful.” Mom handed a massive crystal bowl of peanut butter cups – the miniature red, green and gold ones – to Katie.

“How?”

“Put it in the foyer.”

“Is it Halloween?”

“It’s decorative.”

“I should hope so.  Are we having a hundred people?”

“You should have filled it with ornaments.” I had nothing to do but interfere.

“You should pour me some wine.”

“Who’s going to eat all that?” I searched for an opener in vain. Found a bottle of Grand Marnier in the liquor cabinet to busy myself with instead. “It’s a waste.”

“A waste of what?  What do you do with it?  Give it to the starving?” Katie was finishing college, at the age where you’re reading a lot.  And listening to too many professors. “‘Here’s a sack of candy for the malnourished children.’ The UN doesn’t drop chocolate in Ethiopia.  It’d be Hershey’s Syrup bombs by the time it hit the ground.”

“Had enough coffee?”

“There’s nothing you can do with excess candy.  You have to throw it away.”

“Candy doesn’t go bad.”

“Where do you get that?”

“It’s like Twinkies.”

“Twinkies are pastries.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?  That pastry not going bad proves a Milky Way won’t go bad?

“If a Twinkie doesn’t go bad, then candy sure as hell won’t go bad.”

“So it’s like plastic?  There’s a huge repository of uneaten candy building up right now, and if people don’t eat more Butterfingers, it’ll just keep on growing?”

“A Butterfinger is way up the food chain from a Twinkie.”

“Food chain?  What alpha preys on Butterfingers?  Lollipops?”

“Now they’re all equivalent?”

“If they were all equivalent, we’d have Snickers with continental breakfasts.”

“Ever had one with Twinkies?”

“A Butterfinger?”

“A continental breakfast.”

“Who the hell orders a continental breakfast?’

“It’s your hypothetical.”

“I was being absurd.”

“Agreed.”

“That’s not self-deprecating.”

“That’s an audience call.”

“I’ll make it simple.  You can’t ‘waste’ candy.  It’s impossible.  From the start, the very making of it’s a profligate use of ingredients.”

“Profligate?”

“You need a reference book?”

“I’m the English major.”

“I forgot.  How’s that skill working for you?”

“Well enough to know a lot of things are ‘profligate.’  How about liquor?”

“You ever seen that wasted?”

“Yes.  Right now!” Mom signaled to a merlot near the stove.  “I asked you to open that ten minutes ago.”

“Right.”  I put the debate from my head.  No use fighting with Katie.  She never gave an inch on anything.

“The trick would be finding a stove top hat for him.” Katie shifted back to the urgent business at hand, studying Donnie through the doorway, now intently petting the cat.  He’d no clue about his strength, pulling the skin back on the poor creature’s head until the white membrane around its eyes came into view.

“’Odd Job’ wore a bowler.”

“You sure lederhosen wouldn’t be better?  He’d look great in one of those pointy hats.”

“Is anything with you kids sacred?”

“Classic rock?”  Mom had asked a silly question.

“We could teach him to yodel.  Get him a big horn.”

“Seriously.”  Mom’s tone grew a jagged edge. “I’m not going to say it again.”

“It’s a joke.” Katie took the bowl to the hallway.

“He’s a person.”

So he was.  But as much as Uncle Donnie was a person, and as much as he was an elder, and family, and we’d all have gotten his back, that didn’t exempt him from the cross-hairs. With jokes it’s all in play. Nothing’s ever off the table, and really, Mom had to understand.  By twelve you grasp the rules of humor, and one of them we rarely address but everyone knows as fact is the closer you get to taboo, the sharper and funnier the punch line. It’s not mean or cruel or immoral.  It’s just the way we’re wired.  Amusement and offense stand hand in hand, balancing each other on the opposite sides of a shared razor’s edge. Humor finds the fulcrum of that stasis, lays its observations right there.  I shouldn’t be laughing at this and still, it’s impossible not to.

See, Uncle Donnie was “touched.”  “Challenged,” some might have said.  Nothing severe, just different.  He’d lived on his own and even once held a job.  But he wasn’t operating at my speed, your speed, or most of everyone else’s.  A shade off the state of the art, running Windows ’98 in an ’07 framework.  No matter, of course, as he was one of us, and as he was he was happily taken.  Family’s family, and they all get a seat on the holidays.  No son of any of the great aunts – the vanishing family matriarchs – wouldn’t pay a visit to our home.  As I said, though, nobody, nothing, was off limit.  It was cheap, lazy and low – fishing in an overstocked pond – but Donnie was a source of material nobody could ignore.

And anything in lederhosen’s funny.

The rest of the relatives showed up an hour later.  A couple cousins, their kids, a dog, and a foreign exchange student.  Marko was from Eastern Europe, and he liked to drink.  His present for the hosts was three bottles of foreign vodka, and he insisted we sample them all.  It was humbling every time I saw Marko, a reminder of how soft our kind were.  What we’d call a celebration, view as excess, was a warm-up in his native land.  He ate anything he liked – meats, cheeses, “pastries.”  The fattier and congealed the better, what he could of it slathered in butter.  All of it chased with Parliaments.  And nothing seemed to bother his liver.  No bingeing – just sustained consumption.  Standard leaded fuel intake for a body that had never heard of spin class, green tea’s antioxidant powers or the purity of hormone free chicken.

“You like Iron Maiden?”  He caught up with me on the deck, ducking out to catch some air.  I had to avoid too much hooch, as there was driving to be done that night.

“The band?”

“What else?”  He fired up a smoke.

“I have a soft spot for ‘Run to the Hills.’” Cheap answer, of course.  Who in my demographic didn’t?  It was impossible not to know the song if you’d gone to high school anywhere near the Eighties.  To not remember driving to a party, car packed with Busch 16 ouncers, whacked on idiot adrenaline – knowing somewhere in the evening ahead, some girl would gift you a hand job – and singing along with that tune. “…Riding through dustclouds and barren wastes/Galloping hard on the plains… Chasing the redskins back to their holes/Fighting them at their own game… Murder for freedom a stab in the back/Women and children the cowards attack…  Run to the hills/Run for your lives…”

So it’s a lament on settlers massacring Indians.  So what?  It’s got a killer fucking bass line.

“That’s a pop music hit.”

“Number of the Beast?”

“They play too much on radio.  That’s commercial Maiden.”

Powerslave, Piece of Mind, Killers… What other songs have they done? I dug deep, trying to recall all their records, trying to avoid insulting Marko.  What he didn’t seem to know at the time was heavy metal was dead.  Nirvana’d destroyed it with “Teen Spirit,” kicking in the door for Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Pumpkins.  This was the age of Grunge.

The really hard stuff was alive and well, with Metallica still selling out arenas.  But the big hair, leather-and-spikes metal era was over.  And frankly, even when it had still been in its prime, “Maiden” was B-grade product.  But I couldn’t say that to Marko.  He’d grown up in a Communist stronghold, just emerged from a despot’s fiefdom, and as much I wanted to explain, as much as I wanted him to ‘get it,’ I knew he was in a band. And I knew they covered Iron Maiden, and the rules of what was in and what was out would only seem strange and cruel.

Here’s how it worked with the heavy shit… You had Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Zeppelin.  These were the big bands, the baseline stuff.  You started listening to that in fifth, sixth grade.  After that, you branched out into the leather and hair genres.  You had your Judas Priests, Motley Crues, maybe some Van Halen. From the there you got into the speed stuff, like Metallica, Anthrax, maybe Slayer, and that got you into the hardcore and punk. That started off with the Pistols, then you got into Black Flag (Everybody bought this record called ‘Damaged.’ It’s really great.) From there it was the Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and sooner or later, you wound up listening to the Clash or the Bad Brains, which introduced you to reggae, which got you into Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, which goes along with the Dead and then you were into the Allmans, and then college comes around and suddenly you forget about heavy metal. Until this time you take acid and hear “How Many More Times” blaring in the fraternity basement and remember, ‘Holy fucking shit. Zeppelin’s fucking amazing.’ You dust off those discs and dabble in the old stuff a little and remember AC/DC’s underrated, and as much as chicks hate it sober, they love it when they’re loaded.*  And Sabbath only gets better because that’s the only really heavy shit that sounds perfect absurdly high.  Even Judas Priest has a place because in the right frame of mind, “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” sounds like an electric version of the theme from Jaws, and “Breaking the Law” has a great campy element to it.

But Maiden? Nobody holds any love for Iron Maiden.  They’re kind of like Rush.  Only where Rush has some brilliant songs that unfortunately had to be sung by Geddy Lee, Maiden’s a bad heavy metal opera.  But just good enough to avoid being bad in a good way.  And just serious enough to be impossible to wink at.  Which is all a long way of telling you what everyone who’s had his Iron Maiden phase knows: It’s got to end by nineteen. You can’t fuck, drink, bake, get wired, trip or dance to it, and if you can’t fuck, drink, bake, get wired, trip or dance to it, it means you won’t be listening to it around the college chicks you want to fuck. Music doesn’t have to score you women, but it damned well better not keep them away.  And this I have to tell you, as hard it might be to swallow for a guy just learning to cover the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – you should never, ever, swap fluids with a woman who’s into Iron Maiden.  That shit just isn’t right.

“Die With You Boots On.” I stole a drag off Marko’s smoke. “That’s a good tune.”

“Amen!  A drink?”

“I actually have to run soon.”  I was supposed to be at my buddy Charles’ apartment around eight.  It was the holiday break, high school friends were in town, and we had to do the yearly review of the merciless aging process…  Which chicks were blossoming in adulthood, and which had gone south after school – exploded into two of what they’d been.  The Italian girls always bloated worst.  They had breasts and hips before everyone else, most amazing asses in school.  Then off to college they went.  Then a job at a desk, where what was once taut and curved turned into rolls.  It was terrible watching that happen.  Not enough drinks in the world to see a girl you would have died to fuck in tenth grade turned into her mother so quickly. You weren’t able to bag her back then, and now that you could you wouldn’t want to.  But there wasn’t any feeling superior.  More a fleeting nasty recognition – that time was still on your side, only speeding up in leaps as it passed.

“One more!  You’re going to bar anyway!” Marko wasn’t letting it go. I fixed my eyes east from the deck, across the expanse of the city.  How many nights in this place, staring out at the lights?  You could look out on the whole of the valley, all that was left of the town, a glistening grid of houses, bars and billboards.  Sixteen, eighteen, nineteen…  Now I was what?  Half way out of my twenties?  Where the fuck had it gone?

At least I wasn’t aging badly.  Hell, I wasn’t aging at all.  Just toying with the concept.

“A small one.”  I didn’t trust Marko’s pours. “I have to drive–”

“It’s holidays.”

“So it is.” I gulped back the medicine. “To Iron Maiden!”

“You don’t smoke, too, do you?”  Donnie appeared at my right.

“Only when I drink and they’re around.”

“Smoking gives you cancer.  It’s an awful, awful habit.”

“I don’t do it much.”

“They put you on oxygen.”

“I understand it’s not good, Donnie.”

“You have to walk around with a tank.  They put hoses in your nose, from the tank into your nose, with a mask and a strap around your head.  I’ve seen it.”  Once Donnie got “on track,” there was no going back.  No deviations, no casual asides – nothing would steer the conversation in any other direction.  It was like someone invited a random person’s Id to the party.  But instead of the usual variety that’d wave its freak flag too high, the Id we knew as Uncle Donnie was whirlwind of pointed judgments.  He had no issues dropping science – popping off exactly what he thought in biting staccato quips.  And lord was Donnie dogmatic.  Nothing he liked better than rules, and reminding people when they’d been broken.  He also liked Jesus a lot.

“Something has to get you.”

“You get tumors.”

“Understood… terrible.”

“They grow all over you.  Inside.”

“That’s usually the way.”

“Mrs. Williams… Remember Mrs. Williams who lived next door to Aunt Mary?  Her first husband left her and she married another man?  Mrs. Williams smoked like a chimney and had a heart attack.  She died in her garden.”

“That’s too bad.”

“They found her in her housecoat.  Her husband came out to get her but she died.  Fell down and died in the yard.  In the dirt.”

“I—uh–”

“I saw the ambulance.”

“’Housecoat?’” I hated to extend the discussion, but somebody had to ask.

“She was Presbyterian.”

“What does that have to do with–” Katie choked, laughing through her drink.

“Forget it,” I waved off her question.  The Schism, Henry VIII and the Anglicans… Donnie’d talk church stuff for days, and I’d no time for any of that epic discussion.  It was eight or worse and I was already late to pick up Charles.

“Is it a coat you wear indoors?” Marko put down his drink.  “If you have no petrol?”

“Presbyterians don’t follow the Pope.  They don’t take confession.”

“Right.”  I smiled but didn’t say a word.  Rebuttal’s the only fuel.  Kill the supply of that, watch a sermon wither.

“Her daughter’s dead, too.”

Or not.  “What?”

“Mrs. Williams’ daughter.  She’s dead.  She took pep pills.”

Katie was red-faced now, coughing her cocktail into her hand.

“You want a cookie?” I knew one thing that worked on Uncle Donnie – food.  It was the fastest way out of the conversation, and I needed an exit, badly.  In a moment I’d be asked to have another, stay a few more minutes.  I’d never make it to Charles’ and that just wasn’t an option.  You can’t skip out on seeing old friends.  Miss a few holidays and the chain’s broken, and once it’s snapped, it’s as hard as hell to rebuild.  People get hitched, get old, and they’re not what they were when you knew them in those reckless stretches of your lives.  You have to keep connections consistent to keep one another honest, remind yourselves What You Are.

“Judy Garland took pep pills.”  Donnie just kept rolling. “That’s what killed her.”

“Judy Garland?”  At this point, Katie had to leave the room.

“She is ‘Alice,’ from ‘Wonderland.’”  I didn’t bother correcting Marko.  It was disturbing enough that he recognized the name at all.

“Uncle.”

“Yes.”

“No.  I’m ‘calling Unc— ah, fuhh— Screw it.” I couldn’t curse for real.  Donnie’d admonish me.  “Here.  Try these.  They’re are really good cookies.”  I handed him a dessert tray and eased toward the side door out of the kitchen.

“Do they have chocolate chips?”

“One kind does.”  I had no idea what they were.

“I like the chocolate chips.”

I ran up to a bedroom, called Charles and got changed. 8:15?  Son of a bitch… I gargled with mouthwash, to kill any hint of booze, then down the stairs, on with the jacket, keys in the pocket and out the door to the truck.  The last I remember from the house was running into Donnie roaming the foyer, I assumed following the cat, now hiding for its life beneath the stairs.

I turned on the gas, glanced in the mirror and for moment I was eight years in the past, racing from my place down to Charles’s.  Only this time the scene was different.  This wasn’t to his parents’ place, and we weren’t picking up girlfriends.  Nobody’s folks were out of town.  No keg party, no hand-jobs – just a night out at a local bar, marking time in the in-between years.  Do I have any Iron Maiden in this car?

To be continued.

___________________________________

* One of the first times I met my future wife, she and a loaded friend were in my room, drinking Banker’s Club vodka and dancing to AC/DC’s “Squealer” with my roommate.  My wife, of course, does not recall this evening.

This post is an announcement, about a link to a chapter of Happy Hour is for Amateurs which was removed from the final version of the book.  This excised piece, an amusing and somewhat lurid story, was built around the elements of an earlier website piece a few long time readers will recognize, re-purposed to fit the narrative of the book.  It was included in early versions, but pulled from the later editions.

Why?  Happy Hour was intended to be read quickly. Despite my wordiness here, I’ve always held to the notion a book should never go over 250 pages, 300 tops.*  And there’s only so much ridiculous material you can slam into a reader’s head.  Still, looking back over this chapter, I realize it’s more than just a pile of decadent jokes.  It fleshes out a moment many urban professionals experience… That fulcrum in a career where you realize you’re letting the job take over your mind and you don’t like the caricature you’re becoming, but at the same time you see no escape, and so you figure, “Why not embrace it?  Let it define me.” There’s a stage in many lawyers’ careers where they assume the preposterous “shark” image, with all its embarrassing affectations.  For some it drags on for decades, in many cases their entire working lives.  Thankfully mine was brief, and this piece neatly describes its comic stupidity.

Rather than add it as a bonus to some future expanded version of the book, I’ve decided to simply give the text away.  But it’s not entirely free.  We’re doing a Stephen Colbert-like marketing thing with it.  I’ve a link to the piece’s location I’ll provide to anyone who asks. The only thing I request in exchange is that you post something, anywhere, discussing or plugging Happy Hour. A review on Goodreads, Amazon or Shelfari, a plug on Facebook, a Tweet or mention of it (or the site) on Yelp, Fark or any bulletin board on which you regularly post.

Obviously, if you’re doing this, you liked the book.  The only thing I’d ask is that you comment fairly.  Don’t compare it to Ulysses (unless you’re being absurdist or sarcastic, in which case, swing for the fences).

Once you’ve done this, send a request through the direct messaging portal of the Philalawyer Facebook or Twitter account and you’ll get the link.**  I’d prefer not to do the exchange through the website unless absolutely necessary, as it’s clumsy and already has a monstrous backlog of correspondence.*** (If you don’t have a real or anonymous Facebook or Twitter account, it takes all of two minutes to set one up.)

I should have the first installment of the next serial up next week.  Thanks for the patience, thanks for reading as always, and a Happy Hanukkah and early Merry Christmas to you and your families.

_________________________

* They’re often thickened to justify the $20.00 – $35.00 price point for most hardcovers.   A large number of predictable consumers view density as a sign they’re getting their money’s worth.

** Allow a few hours for response, particularly after 5:00 PST, after which responses may not be provided until the next morning.  No need to provide a link to what you wrote.  I’ll take you at your word.  And, of course, if you already did this in the past, just ask for the link.

*** To the crowd of people sending me “What should I do?  I’m graduating, there are no jobs, and I can’t think of any path other than law school” emails, I’m not ignoring you.  I will condense the posts I have written on that subject into a mega-primer at some point.  In the interim, here, read these:

Why the current labor market might be a blessing in disguise for new graduates.

Why you should only go to law school if you absolutely want to be a lawyer and fully understand, from eyewitness experience, what the job entails, and never, ever, invest $100K in law school, or any other grad school, simply to avoid a bad job market.

Why it’s no longer a question of whether you’d make a good lawyer, but whether the legal profession has a real future, economically speaking.

Why the billable hour is a cancer on the profession of law, has lead to rampant, industry wide fraud on clients and desperately needs to be replaced by a smarter, more value-oriented business model.

Why the legal industry has no leverage with which to stop the increasingly drastic fee reductions being forced on it by clients.

Why a semi-smart slacker should never go to law school as a default career choice.

I’m editing a new piece, holiday-themed, which will start next week.  In the interim, this is a “ketchup” post – a few updates on things I’ve been remiss in providing.  Apologies on the delay in getting this information out.  I’ve been incredibly busy.

MEDIA

Apparently, the British media likes Happy Hour is for Amateurs:

* The Times of London thinks you ought to “Slope off” with a copy of Happy Hour is for Amateurs this Christmas.

* Happy Hour comes in at Number Four among the “Magnificent Seven Christmas Books for Lawyers.” (In an undeserved but much appreciated nod, the reviewer also compares the book to John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.)

LINKS

Below is a collection of links to sites you might enjoy.  When Rudius Media ceased hosting Philalawyer.net, it also ceased hosting a few other notable sites/boards.  If you’re a long time Rudius reader, you might be looking for them.  If not, you ought to consider reading them.

Shrinktalk

Dr. Rob needs little introduction. I’ve done multiple pieces with him in the past and continue to do so now.  Hopefully, in the near term, he will have a book coming out, a comic expose about life as a psychologist, and what goes on in the world of mental health professionals.  The guy’s a great, funny writer, and if you’ve ever wondered what goes through a shrink’s head – the kind who isn’t afraid to openly disclose what he’s thinking – this is a must read.

Hollywood Interrupted

I’ve written about Mark Ebner here and that’s about all that needs to be said.  This guy is a serious, hardcore journalist whose specialty is uncovering the sleazy underside to every Hollywood success story.  They all have one, and Mark nails it.  In a world of bought and paid for media and barely credible internet “scoops,” Mark’s the real article – a serious goddamned reporter who knows how to write, well.

The Idiot Board

One of the most improperly named forums on the web, this is a collection of people who used to post on the Rudius Message Boards.  There is no way to explain the place.  It’s one of the most eclectic collections of individuals you’ll find on any bulletin board, covering every topic imaginable but one – politics.  Which means it weeds out all of the flame wars and ad hominems you’ll see on every other board.  Unlike most bulletin boards, which tend to have an exclusive theme, this one’s wide open, and attracts an excellent crossfire of widely diverging views from people of disparate ages and backgrounds.

One other note…  While I have nothing at all against Snark (hell, it’s two thirds of my humor), the interesting and unique thing about this board’s culture is that the participants actively try to engage in constructive dialogue.  Too many boards devolve into a collection of posters trying too hard impress each other with dismissive, ironic quips.  The Idiot Board has some of that, and what’s there is biting and funny, but they do a fine job of holding it to a reasonable level so it doesn’t take over the conversation.  That’s rare on the Interwebs.

Attention Crash

This is a group of artists who used to post on the Rudius Media Boards.  Of particular interest is the “Speak No Evil” section, an area where writers, editors and board contributors critique submissions from prospective authors and discuss their own work.  It’s an excellent source of information and dialogue on all things related to both the craft and business of writing.

INTERVIEWS

I linked these before on Twitter, but neglected to do so here:

* A great interview on Danny Bonaduce’s WYSP morning show here.  (Scroll down in the Podcasts to “Bonaduce 102709 8AM, Entertainment, The Philadelphia Lawyer.” Interview starts at the mid-point of the clip.)

* An in-depth interview with Colin Marshall on “The Marketplace of Ideas” here.  (This guy asked amazing questions.)

TWITTER UPDATE

For those of you who refuse to join Twitter, below is the first of a Twitter update:

• “Economic Justice” (n.) – A buzzword of those holding little knowledge of either.

• “Genital Piercing. Because the other 1,458,752,917 better hobbies just didn’t seem to cut it.” #nopunintended

• The ‘79 Pirates came back from three down, but they were a much different team. And had access to a whole lot of really good coke.

• Generally, the stronger a man’s “beliefs,” the lighter his book shelf.  #justsayin’

• “Rachel Maddow. Removing the ’sexy’ from lesbianism one drier-than-week-old-dogshit sermon at a time. #vacantmediadarlings

• It’s not “Depression.” You’re just stuck doing work you loathe to pay for stuff you thought would fill in the blanks. It’s called “America.”

• Answer to “Why don’t law schools teach kids how to practice?” Because they’re near entirely staffed with teachers who couldn’t. #lawschool

• “Pro-Life Fiscal Conservative” (n.) – One who knows to howl about “entitlements,” but has no idea where they start. See also: Oxymoron.

• Populism = “We must have pay cuts at TARP companies!” Populism Fail = “Why are all the finance workers going to foreign firms?”

• I used to watch reality television. Now I sniff glue. Same brain damage, 1/10 the time. #efficiency

• The new Porsche Panamera and J.Lo… Both much more attractive from the front.

• No one “believes” in Evolution. We “accept” it because the scientific method validates it. #importantdistinctions

• “I’m not going to bid against myself.” Do people understand how technically moronic this statement is? #lawyers

• Re: introductions, lose the bone-crushing handshake. I understand you’re a “masculine” man. And I’m already 60% sure you’re straight.

• “Attorney” is to “Professional” as “Podiatrist” is to “Medical Doctor.”

• My opinion of Noam Chomsky? A brilliant, fascinating, and utterly preposterous individual.

• Is it me, or do the Moderates mutter and the Liberals whine, while every goddamned Puritan seems to have a bullhorn? #asymmetries

• Here’s a simple way states can save cash. Stop wasting millions on the death penalty. Is there an outlay with a worse cost/benefit ratio?

• Here’s a list of a few things they don’t tell you in law school. #lawschool #law #lawyers

• 1. Constitutional Law is interesting. It’s also pretty much useless. You’ll rarely, if ever, see a con law issue in a case.

• 2. Tax courses are the most important ones you’ll take. Be it in deals or settlements, tax impacts everything.

• 3. Take Bankruptcy, particularly in this economy. In deals or suits, it’s a great device to use, or use as a threat.

• 4. You wrote for your school’s “Law and Horticulture Review”? Waste of time. If it isn’t Law Review, no employer cares.

• 5. Being a deal lawyer? Fungible skill set that creates career options. Being a litigator? Ultimately, a dead end.

• 6. Brains are cheap. Book of business is everything. Can’t sell? Introverted? Get over it, and quick, or you’re dead.

• 7. Today, you’re better off going to a small firm where you can build a book than a big one where you’ll never do so.

• 8. Case cites are all cut and paste in practice. Memorizing the “Blue Book” is time better spent masturbating.

• 9. Your ability to read (and understand) financial statements is 50X more important than any Moot Court medal.

• 10. Take courses in post-judgment execution process. Shielding debtors’ assets from creditors is a growth industry.

• Simon Cowell isn’t laughing *with* you. Neither is Oprah, Kelly Ripa or Martha Stewart. #You’rethemark

• Non-ironic use of “No homo” = “Homo.” See also: Confused, Closeted, “Shit for brains.” (Inspired by/borrowed from @MarkEbner59)

• Re: Reality TV, is Hollywood cynically brilliant, or just lucky? Natively stupid enough to perfectly connect with the lowest common mind?

• Perjury (n.) – The remaining gas left in a courtroom after grandstanding and obfuscation have dissipated.

• It’s always been “medicinal.” We use to it cope with the other 60% of stressbags and neurotics in society who ought to be smoking it.

• A true conservative does not inflict his “family” or “traditional” values on others via legislation. He minds his own goddamned business.

• If we eliminated all the useless, revenue-sapping, chair-warming positions in our industries we’d have 50% unemployment. #JohnGaltisdead

• Most deliberately quiet people aren’t Don Drapers. They’re just self-aware enough to realize they come off a whole lot smarter silent.

• Proper response to “Well, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer”? “Okay.”

• Obama should fire Axelrod. This War on the Non-Left Leaning Media is beyond foolish. Gives the opponent exactly what it wants: Attention.

• Let’s discuss the Kardashians, and Nicole Ritchie. Then we can swap tips on how to decorate our double wides. #trailertrashnation

• How’s a lawyer reach 2400 billable hours a year? Standing on truckload of bullshit.

• People who would have really enjoyed each other’s company: Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

• “It’s only suborning perjury if you were dumb enough to have asked the client if he was lying.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes #lawschool #law

• Aggressive Regulation (n.) – Technique by which politicians fix greed and malfeasance of finance industry. By moving it to other countries.

• Re: 10,000, enjoy the cautious optimism. When the corp profits caused by cost-cutting abate next year, the markets will drop like a stone.

• The frequency with which one quotes Ayn Rand is inversely proportional to the length of time he’ll wait to seek a handout when challenged.

• Owner’s translation of Chinese characters tattooed on her inner thigh: “Life & Love.” Actual translation: “Frozen entrails. Perishable.”

• The correct response to an accusation of “moral relativism”? “Thank you.”

• White trash + Reality TV-induced obsession w/”celebrity” + ingenuity = Balloon Boy. A Horatio Alger tale for the age. #WelcometotheNewDumb

• A white collar or cuffs on a colored shirt isn’t an “executive” look. It’s geriatric, with a twist of “guido” and “pimp.”

• “The ‘Kate Gosselin Cut.’ Because you want your head to look like a botched circumcision.”

• Those “Green” issues of Vanity Fair, Time, etc. succeed in one regard – making it into my recycling bin faster than any others. #LikeSominex

• I’m actually in favor in favor of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” In regard to people’s faith. “Testify” to your mirror, or in court.

• If you’re thinking of hiring a “life coach,” you need a lot more help than that.

• Justice of the peace in Louisiana refuses to marry interracial couple.  In other news, Eisenhower wins second term.

• Monogram acceptable? You’ve early onset Alzheimer’s. Monogram unacceptable? Every other instance.

• I’m not saying it’s plagiarism, but having all those Hobbits die at the end has to be copyright infringement. #PalinMemoir

• Those square toed Kenneth Cole-style shoes w/wide soles flaring out on the sides? Unless you ride to school on the short bus, lose them.

• If the “’70s bush” makes a comeback, what do women who’ve had permanent laser hair removal do? Merkins? #emergingindustries #retrotech

• Gunner #1: “Was the sex good?” Gunner #2: “She was sooo hot. It was incredible.” Overheard in no law school, ever. #lawschool

• Ardi (n.) – Not Eve.

• That big banks have paid back the Fed is immaterial. They were bridge loans to “capitalists” who deserved a lesson in how cash flow works.

• Reinvention isn’t optional in this economy. Do it on your own terms or it’ll be done for you. On someone else’s. #thenewsecurity=nosecurity

• Show me an advocate for economic protectionism and I’ll show you a man whose capacity to see into the future is measured in milliseconds.

• If the thinking classes of this country are socially liberal/fiscally conservative, I’ve one question: Where’s our party? #CanIGetaWitness?

• “Philadelphia. Because you need a place to stop and take a piss on the trip between New York and Washington.”

• NYTimes on Polanski:”70s Culture Collides w/Changed World.” Ah, yes. If only for the halcyon days of bell bottoms, disco and… child rape.

• Anyone think instead of a holiday in his name, maybe a better way of honoring Harvey Milk would have been to repeal Proposition Eight?

• The earth isn’t 5000 years old. You have exactly 5000 brain cells.

• If there’s a use for white wine beyond cooking, or getting the dog drunk, I’ve yet to encounter it.

Here’s Part II of my book recommendations.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe

An often forgotten text because the rest of the author’s catalog is staggering, this is the high point of the first wave of New Journalism.  The book’s overwritten, over-detailed and often overly dramatic.  But its florid approach to the story is exactly what the topic needed.  The only thing harder than writing about being on drugs is writing about other people on drugs.  The subject’s, well… subjective.  Almost past comprehension.  How do I know what you saw on acid?  How do you know what I thought on mushrooms?  And why would any of those personal moments interest anyone outside the immediate scene?

Painting a picture of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters a person not “On the bus” would comprehend is a job I’d never want to tackle.  The fear would be boring the reader, droning on and on about a bus trip with no destination but “Furthur.”  Wolfe was up to the challenge.  Where he could have drawn the Pranksters as mindless hedonists and had more than enough simple action to write a shocking expose that’d scare the Christ out of buttoned-up America, he instead went deep, and personal.  He draws the more lost than rebellious Pranksters as victims of their own silly faiths.  He offers Kesey as a fraudulent enigma, guessing as he goes more than thinking.  And in the best portrayal of the book, the cartoon-like “Cowboy Neal” Cassady appears as the sum of his manias – a ball of amphetamine psychosis, foot stamped on the gas, driving through life with the knowledge he’d only be stopped by a wall.  It all adds up to what should have been the ultimate had-to-be-there-to-grasp-it experience described in a fashion any reader can appreciate.

As some critics have asserted, including Kesey himself, the emphasis on style and flow that makes the text read so well may have caused Wolfe to omit some important events.  But that charge misses the point.  It’s obvious The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test wasn’t written to serve as the definitive history of the genesis of the Hippie Revolution.  Only the most entertaining.

Modern Manners: An Etiquette Guide for Rude People – P.J. O’Rourke

The title says it all – Emily Post for the terminally crude.  There are a millions different satirical guides to manners floating around Amazon, but this book easily remains the best.  And though O’Rourke’s famous for much more in-depth works (Parliament of Whores, Holidays in Hell, Give War a Chance), this is the sharpest use of his humor – a nihilist pen unhinged from any sense of boundaries or good taste.  To wit:

On suicide etiquette:

You should consider the feelings of other before you commit suicide.  Try to kill yourself in a public place.  Climb up on a bridge or ledge so that crowds can gather… Let at least one policeman climb out after you… This is how they get medals and promotions.

On who should pay for cocaine:

There’s considerable debate about this.  Some say the guest should pay for cocaine as way of saying thank you to the host.  Others say the host should pay for cocaine as part of the entertainment.  Most people, however, say society at large should pay for cocaine by having to watch maniacally indulgent stand-up routines, pathetically disconnected pop music performances, and dreadful late-night anti-drug commercials on television.

On masturbation:

Sophisticated people masturbate without compunction.  They do it for reasons of health, privacy, thrift, and because of the remarkable perfection of invisible sex partners.  But, more important, they masturbate for philosophical reasons.  It is an ethos of modern life that before you are able to love others you must first love yourself.  And what’s love without sex?

If that doesn’t assure you the book is worth multiples of its price, consider this fantastic review it garnered on Amazon:

Perverted disgusting garbage, March 19, 2006

Reading Mr. O’Rourke’s All the Troubles in the World gave me the impression that he is an excellent political/economics analyst with a tolerable bad streak. The fine writing in that book encouraged me to acquire some of his other work.

I was horribly repulsed by the explicit language, immature humor and overall repugnance of his guide to manners. What I had hoped would be a light poke at contemporary society so sickened me that I threw the book in the trash before I was halfway done. I regret reading even that far.

Anything that gets a scold’s panties in that tight a twist has to be flat-out hysterical.  And it is.  I recommend reading this in tandem with The Modern Drunkard.  You’ll know all you’ll ever need to walk properly through high society.  And high through proper society.

In Defense of Elitism – William A. Henry

This book pissed a lot of people off when it came out, for exactly the reasons you’d expect.  Henry, who sadly passed away shortly after it was published, basically said the following: Certain ideas, beliefs, and social policies are, objectively speaking – based on logical, rational assessment – better than others.  And we should elevate them so, while openly and loudly devaluing their inferiors.  We should not be forced, out of guilt or deference to certain people’s delicate sensibilities, traditions or “feel good” political goals, to countenance foolish policies or arguments.

Henry argues aggressively and concisely why we need to develop a pecking order among philosophies debated in the public sphere.  Why we need to reach agreement about what concepts hold more validity than others.  That individualism trumps tribalism.  Education trumps neo-illiteracy and “folksiness.”  Darwin trumps faith.  And social Darwinism trumps Utopian attempts to create “Everyone’s a winner!” societies via governmental policy.  Henry also offers an important warning, prescient then and even more compelling now: That if we neglect to call out the lightweights, if we shrink from mocking their illogic, by our silence we grant them credibility.  Faith becomes a rebuttal to science, intrusive government intervention as natural as the free market. Regressive cultures lose all stigma, their backwardness seen as benign “uniqueness.”

Henry offers an excellent argument for why that needs to end, and why the only way to stop the degradation of our aggregate intellect is for people who know better – people who can spot sophistry, mysticism and Utopian policy-making for what they are – to reject them out of hand, before they can even pretend to have a place in any serious debate.  This is a book everyone needs to read.  Particularly if it sounds like it’ll piss you off.

House of Cards – William D. Cohan

This is a sprawling narrative, similar in its approach to Mark Ebner’s Six Degrees of Paris Hilton.  Everything I lauded about Mark’s methodology in my review of that book can be applied here.  Cohan leaves no rock unturned.  Every detail regarding the why and how of Bear Stearns’ failure is yanked from the ashes of the fallout and re-assembled in a taut chronology – four hundred plus pages worth.

What sets this book part, however, isn’t the detail or research.  It’s the sense you’re there in real time. The way the author gives the dry action life, show the cracks spider-webbing through the dam, increasing with speed as they grow and an inevitable sense of doom eclipses every effort to save what you know is going to collapse.  And this is the shrewdest of analyses, because time is the essence of the story.  Yes, it’s a book about money, Wall Street, hubris and excess.  But more it’s a book about timing, and what happens when your timing’s terrible.

Bear Stearns might have lived another day.  If it had more time to get bought, if the financial crisis came earlier and it was able to use the Fed lending window as firms in its place were later… If it held on as long as Lehman, kept the short-sellers and rumors in check. Then perhaps it could have rolled its debt.  Because as anyone who’s run a business knows, the revenue eventually comes. The problem’s all in the cash flow, in being stuck without funds to pay down the credit line, or money to cover the office lease or mortgage.

Bear Stearns died in the pincers of a panic, a smaller, individualized version of the same type of liquidity crisis that took down Lehman Brothers, and should have taken down Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.  And in emphasizing how Bear was a victim of poor timing – a simultaneous lack of confidence in the firm on the part of all of its borrowing sources – the book speaks volumes on why America feels nothing but revulsion for the Too Big to Fail banks that survived.

Every banking profit that’s ever existed derives from a risk premium.  It’s the heart of the concept of lending, the only reason the industry even exists.  And part of assessing risk, a massive part of it every competent businessman understands, is hedging against a temporary cash crunch – keeping reserves on hand to offset the worst of worse case scenarios… having an emergency fund to tap in those Black Swan instances where it all goes to shit, where you can’t meet this week’s payroll or cover the vendors’ invoices.

The average business doesn’t fail due to lack of revenue over a sustained period of time. Those businesses never get off the ground.  The average business fails because it runs into a temporary dry spell. It defaults, and then the default interest runs and it has to lay off workers and the expenses pile one top of another, all while it can’t produce a thing.  The banks and creditors hammer it and in period of weeks or months, what was once a thriving concern turns into a empty shell.  All due to one bad stretch… a space of time where it didn’t have the money it needed to keep going and consequently drowned the way a shark does if it isn’t moving.

Currently, if you’re listening, you’re hearing people like Lloyd Blankfein defend a firm like Goldman Sachs, saying “We didn’t need the TARP money.” Bullshit.  If the TARP rescue hadn’t happened, Morgan Stanley was headed down the drain, and Goldman was trailing in its wake.  It’s not a rebuttal to the critics that Goldman paid it all back with interest.  Because as Cohan’s book eloquently shows, the difference between winners and losers in pure capitalism is all a matter of timing.  How well equipped was a firm to deal with that short-term worst case imaginable?

The answer’s clear on Goldman.  As clear as it was on Citi, Lehman and Morgan Stanley.  Not very well.  They only survive today because the ref stepped in and changed the rules.  Where Bear and Lehman died on the field as the clock ran down, Goldman and others got the world’s biggest bridge loans.  I agreed with giving it to them then, and I still hold that position today.  Too big too fail is too big too fail, and saving those banks saved our economy.  But their success in the time elapsed since hasn’t changed them into winners.  And it doesn’t give people like Blankfein a pedestal to claim now that they didn’t need the money before.

Goldman Sachs failed, and the primary reason it survives where Bear Stearns collapsed is that Goldman started teetering in the middle of the credit crisis, rather than at its outset, when the government believed it could let a few investment banks go.  The Fed was forced to give Goldman a lifeline, or at least the appearance of one, to get it past a drought of cash and confidence identical to the one Cohan brilliantly chronicles as the cause of Bear’s insolvency. I recommend reading House of Cards if for no reason than grasping that point – seeing the reality Goldman, Citi, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch barely escaped.  And I recommend somebody sending a copy to Mr. Blankfein, as a reminder that, No, technically speaking, his firm is not a successful capitalist endeavor, but actually a well-rescued loser.  And that the only real difference between him, Richard Fuld and James Cayne is timing.

The Great Derangement – Matt Taibbi

I’ve a private theory that half of the people believing in any movement or religion don’t even know what they’re following.  They’re along for the ride.  Born into it, stumbling into it in a moment of recovery from some rotten diet pill addiction, or buying into something, anything, for the sheer comfort that comes with conceding the wheel… With knowing that as mad, ludicrous, irrational, preposterous and flat-out imbecilic as the thing you’re believing might be, You’re Not Alone.  Hundreds, thousands, millions are sharing your delusion.  There’s wisdom in crowds, right?  Somebody wrote a book about it once.

Taibbi stares down the New Crazy on the Right and Left and paints a shocking, hysterical picture showing just how far this deranged need to buy into a movement can go.  On the Right, he joins a megachurch – pastor’s John Hagee’s, specifically, whom you might recall as the one time “spiritual adviser” to John McCain.  I say “one time,” of course, because the presidential candidate was forced to distance himself from Hagee after the preacher’s raving, Apocalyptic sermons about Jesus’ imminent return to Israel and conversion of all of its Jews to Christianity were discovered and broadcast on national media. On the Left, Taibbi takes on the “9/11 Truthers” movement.  You might know these people as the charmers responsible for dozens of Youtube movies pinpointing the location of hidden dynamite charges going off in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks and hundreds of websites detailing how George Bush and the CIA, rather than Al Queda, blew up the towers.

This would all be deeply depressing if not for Taibbi’s treatment. Rather than waste time and effort scowling at the nuts, or dismantling what’s clearly madness, he does the only thing a rational mind can – laugh at it, screw with it, immerse himself in the insanity and treat it as a theatre of the absurd.  To give you an example of what to expect, here’s an excerpt about a prayer retreat at which Taibbi, pretending to be a born-again Christian, has to offer a story about some childhood pain he’s trying to cure through Jesus:

“Hello,” I said, taking a deep breath. “My name is Matt.  My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversized shoes.”

.  .  .

“He’d be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television,” I heard myself saying.  “And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he’d pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know – whap!”

I looked around the table and saw three flatlined, plainly indifferent psyches plus one mildly unnerved Morgan staring back at me.  I could tell that my coach had been briefly possessed by the fear that a terrible joke was being played on his group.  But then I actually saw him dismissing the thought – after all, who would do such a thing?

The book’s filled with ridiculous, cringe-worth incidents like this, culminating in Taibbi challenging a rabid 9/11 Truther to step outside and fight.  And actually going outside and waiting for the man.  At its peaks, the book recalls some of the savage satire of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. Telling a room full of Jesus freaks you were abused by a clown may not seem as crazy as Thompson’s creation of a rumor picked up by the media that vice presidential candidate Edwin Muskie was addicted to Ibogaine, a rare and exceedingly potent South American hallucinogen.  But that fails to consider the likelihood of actual physical harm being visited on Taibbi.  None of the reporters duped into the Ibogaine story were going to attack Thompson for pimping that fabrication.  Taibbi was alone with a field trip of earnest salvation junkies in the middle of nowhere when he pulled off the “abusive clown” gag.  That takes a hell of a lot of balls.

But what takes even more balls is to write a book ripping the Right and Left at once.  Most authors pick a side, figuring for marketing and sales purposes it’s better to gobble up all of either camp than alienate and challenge members of both ideologies.  Taibbi leans a little to the Left politically, but he’s careful to keep that in check, to blame both sides where they deserve it.  That’s rare in our bought-and-paid-for media.  And in the end, that might be what makes this book such an engaging read.  Taibbi doesn’t care what you think.  He’d just prefer we all do so.

Part III next week.

People have been asking me for reading recommendations for a while.  Other than pimping my own book, I’ve been lax in responding for one simple reason – I tend to give books away when I’m done with them.  Terrible habit, I know.  And, of course, it’s impeded my ability to easily offer suggestions.  In the spirit of providing a list for the holidays, however, I’ve made an inventory of what I recall, dug through the moving boxes of yellowing texts still sitting in the basement, and scoured the bookshelf in the living room.  Here’s why I came up with – the first of the three part catalog of books you might like reading.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – Toby Young

Young is a whiny, socially ambitious English fop – the sort of character I’d every reason to loathe.  And yet I loved every page of this book; didn’t want to reach the end.  As comedic memoirs go, this is the gold standard.  The stories are so ludicrous (ordering strippers for a Conde Nast executive’s birthday gathering, crashing the Vanity Fair Oscar party after your boss, Graydon Carter, explicitly bars you from the event) and the narrator so clueless and impenetrable, you find yourself laughing at every page.  I assume there’s a tremendous amount of embellishment here, as no one could be as much of a fool as Young makes himself out to be (some scenes come off like a hybrid of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Three Stooges).  It’s welcome, however, and perfectly placed, enough to make a book about a slice of society I’ve almost zero interest in not only appealing, but utterly fucking hysterical.  And as bonus, in the spaces where Young pulls back and gets serious, his cutting observations on New York media professionals, and in particular, Carter, are as astute as they are amusing.

Snowblind – Robert Sabbag

Forget about Scarface or the myriad sagas written and filmed about Carlos Lehder or Pablo Escobar.  This is the mother of all drug smuggling stories, and one you’ll never see produced into a movie.  Why?  Because it’s true, and the main character, a Hamptons born silver-spooner turned smuggler, Zachary Swan, gets away with it all in the end.  Where comfortable, reinforcing narratives give us failures like Blow’s George Jung doing decades in federal prison, Swan beat the prosecution, walked away from the business and lived out his days as a farmer in North Carolina.  But it’s not just the challenging ending, or the harrowing circumstances Swan found himself in, or the fact that he didn’t have to smuggle for a living and seems to have done it primarily out of boredom, that make the book so riveting.  Sabbag’s impeccable attention to detail, flawless prose and nuanced storytelling make the text an absolute masterwork.  Where most of these stories offer cheap blood and guts portrayals of hideous, malevolent actors, Sabbag draws us a cast of neophytes – real, normal human beings from more than stable backgrounds – learning the world’s most dangerous trade on the fly. If Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is “the best book on the dope decade,” Snowblind is easily the best on dope smuggling.

The Ginger Man – J.P. Donleavy

This is one of the best developments of a character ever committed to print.  Every inch of Sebastian Dangerfield, the appalling anti-hero, is drawn in excruciating detail.  Drunkard, spendthrift and recidivist delinquent debtor… Absentee father and husband, deviant and abusive leech… There’s nothing to like of this lout and yet still, somehow, Donleavy makes him hilarious – charming in his endless grotesqueries, a razor-tipped wit in his cups.  You won’t find insight in this book, nor will find much action.  But that was never the point.  This isn’t a plot-driven page-turner, and it’ll frustrate, if not infuriate, anyone coming to it from the “story trumps delivery” perspective.  The magic here’s all in the prose, and those who simply want to get to the end might be better served by a Yugo headed down a straightaway, where the writing here is more along the lines of a Ferrari doing donuts.  Part poem, part stage comedy, part novel, I’d struggle to find a better styled text, or better timed jokes in dialogue.  Just remember to read it carefully.  The back and forth between the characters is fast, and if you miss a set-up quip, the punchlines might be obscured.

Class – Paul Fussel

Reared upper middle class in a depressed state, I’ve always be fascinated by class and status neuroses.  The envy, the angst, the displaying and comparing of our wares to one another… that endless, cringe-inducing black comedy driving our absurdist economy.  Fussel nails it all in spades, with a subtle but merciless wit – an encyclopedia of nasty bon mots delivered from a pitch perfect, staring-down-his-nose-at-the-aspirant perspective.  Be forewarned, however.  I doubt there’s a reader alive who won’t find himself in the cross-hairs of at least a handful of Fussel’s sarcastic barbs. I’ve never held any pretensions about my upbringing or station, but it wasn’t until I finished this book that I realized just what a middle minded boor I very well might be.

The Modern Drunkard – Frank Kelly Rich

Here’s the obligatory disclaimer: Yes, the author of this book provided a blurb for the back of Happy Hour is for Amateurs.  But that’s not why I’m lauding his work.  And really, considering what’s in my book, why wouldn’t the author of both a book and magazine with that title give me a quote?  It’s only consistent, right?  Well, not exactly. Modern Drunkard’s unique.  It’s not a Gonzo narrative, and it doesn’t rely on any shock for its humor.  If anything, it’s a retro comedy – a half-satiric look back at a form of drinking culture sadly vanishing from our nation, banished by Puritan scolds, corporate taskmasters and health-nuts… People telling us the three martini lunch was an abomination, college binging is a “national health emergency” and that anyone downing more than three beers a night is a borderline alcoholic.

Where a book like mine revels in mocking the hypocrisies of this teetotaler revolution, Modern Drunkard pretends it never even came into being, rewinding the historical record to the days when booze wasn’t a vice.  When a Manhattan with lunch was standard.  When every office had a bar, and not just for use at Christmas.  With its vintage Early-60s graphics and copies of classic liquor ads woven through the jokes, the book’s almost reminiscent of Mad Men.  And as it celebrates a lifestyle deemed unhealthy, you can’t help asking, “Why?  With who’s set of eyes?”  Sure, the hooch might  kill you early.  So might a lot of other things.

But the best of The Modern Drunkard isn’t wrapped up solely in its message.  The book’s delivery is just as important, with its litany of genteel set-ups followed with uppercut punchlines. Frank Kelly Rich is a superb prose stylist, entirely unfit for the “dick-lit” tag affixed to this or anything else he’s authored. If Man Men is an apt comparison, and it is, Modern Drunkard’s what Don Draper would sound like doing stand-up.  Half in the bag, but smooth… unnervingly rational and utterly unapologetic:

The book you hold in your hands will not only show you how to behave once you’ve had a few, it is also a rallying cry for a large – and largely scattered – tribe. It is the embodiment of the inevitable backlash against the army of self-appointed nannies who believe any manner of fun shouldn’t interrupt the long, grey lockstep toward the prison of death.  Those who have codddled and browbeat society into believing that everything must be done in exact moderation (and that extends to happiness), under penalty of social osctracism.  That anything that makes us feel good must inherently be bad.

This book seeks to alleviate that misplaced guilt, to affirm the notion our grandfathers held to be true: It is perfectly fine and normal to want to get outside of one’s head, to take a vacation from oneself.

Of course, critics will attempt to diminish this fine escape by rather smugly stating that our troubles will still be there when we wake up.  Which makes as much sense as canceling your vacation in Cancun because, hey, your job will still be there when you get back.  They’re failing to grasp two very fundamental truths: 1) even a temporary escape is better than no escape at all, and 2) alcohol is very cheap in Mexico.

And that’s just from the Introduction.

Buy this book.  It’ll make you a better person.  Or at least a better drunk.

Part II later this week.