"House manager" is a pretty spectacular euphemism for "manservant".
I totally loved that Regressives article. Third base in the back of a van! It's nice to read something about people who are like you but worse.
Am I wrong if I don't hate anyone but Amy Sohn, who wrote the Regressives article? Courtney Love is a famous person with enough money to have servants, and so she has someone whose job it is to bring her toast. I mean, I generally hate the rich, and Love's tastes sound a little childish, but beyond being rich, what's the problem?
And the Regressives article: "Look, I know fortysomethings with kids who drink, do drugs, have sex with their spouses in ways I find unseemly and commit adultery." All of that's arguably bad behavior on the part of whoever's doing it, but still -- is her general point that people that age should be watching Matlock exclusively, or what.
I am unable to remember to put question marks on the end of rhetorical questions, and I loathe myself for it.
I totally despised the Regressives article, even though I haven't read much of it. It's not that I expect to hate the people in it that much - though I probably will - but I reflexively loathe any article that purports to identify some new class of people based on nothing more than a few anecdotes.
Initial reaction: Jesus lifestyle section Christ, kill it with fire.
Second reaction: I hate to keep quoting the Flip-Pater like he's some sort of secular saint,* but usually, when I relate to him the lowlights of some wretch's media-ready lifestyle, he is able -- perhaps because of age, perhaps because of his long life with and around unhappy people -- to perceive the fear and cramped unhappiness that tend to hide behind boasting about how awesome, fun, rebellious and unusual one is, and to slip the natural reaction to get angry and contemptuous in the face of such patently, adolescently needy posturing.
That said, Courtney Love is not a well woman, while Amy Sohn is just a twit.
* For one thing, I am pretty sure, based on my close reading of Augustine, that a saint would have given me a car for my birthday and/or Christmas by now.
I think foremost among the horrors of the second article is stuff like this:
The difference between twenty-five and thirty-eight is that, at thirty-eight, when a strange man says he wants to have sex with you, you feel grateful.
How can this even be uttered without soon upon should follow: Am I right, ladies?!
The whole thing is like a character in Sex & the City thinks she's a character in Girls, almost explicitly so.
also
Why do moms in my generation regress, whether by drugging, cheating, or going out too late and too often? Because everything our children thrive on--stability, routine, lack of flux, love, well-paired parents--feels like death to those entrusted with their care.
Oh hey, it turns out having kids is not mandatory, if you hate everything about it so goddamn much.
Personal to Heebie: you are in no way, however slight, like this article.
I didn't get the Amy Sohn article. Does she approve, because those people are having fun? Is she illuminating a lurking problem? Is she boasting? Do I care about this phenomenon?
I didn't understand.
It's misery-bragging. And I think it's well-executed. That article is not boring. The author is Irving you plenty of leeway to be contemptuous and sympathetic to her friends and her at the same time.
Irving? Really, autocorrect? giving. remind me to misery-brag about my new used iPad one of these days.
Personal to Heebie: you are in no way, however slight, like this article.
Thank you for this.
I, on the other hand, recognize myself in every word etched in acid across my soul.
Well, I do like drinking, at least.
9: Amy spent most of the (late 90s?) early aughties as a sex columnist and was more or less spoken of as a "real live Carrie Bradshaw!" Then she got married, moved to Brooklyn, had babies, retired her column, and I thought fell off the face of the earth.
That said, Courtney Love is not a well woman, while Amy Sohn is just a twit.
Sounds right to me. Let's ignore these people and move on.
I agree with K-sky that it seems well-constructed. "But there is a wild, life-craving, narcissistic, oblivious madness to it that reminds me of Don Draper and pals in the mid-sixties. These women are the men their mothers divorced."--that's nicely done, I think.
Let's ignore these people and move on.
And so the blog ended.
I kind of agree with k-sky (and LB). So many of the tropes of Lifestyle writing--money, men & women, marriage, City life, parenting, sex, mild deviance, ennui, the empty gestures toward generational shifts, the lack of any real point--pulled together by an oscillating authorial voice that both identifies and distances itself from the scene. The result is plenty of room for scolds and eyerolls alike, and for people like me to be left feeling like there's no reaction I can have that won't leave me feeling like I've been trolled.
and for people like me to be left feeling like there's no reaction I can have that won't leave me feeling like I've been trolled
This is also a great line!
Personal to Heebie: you are in no way, however slight, like this article.
Yeah, they live some place cool.
20: Needs a rewrite. (Two "feelings.") I shoulda previewed.
"Fuck chocolate. Kurt hated chocolate, too -- that was one of the things we had in common."
Really? Because I'd have thought the shared heroin addiction was a more important element of your relationship.
"Both are musicians and care deeply about heroin and Dean&Deluca, while not caring for chocolate, summer camp, opera, modern design, or swimming in cold water."
3.1: but beyond being rich, what's the problem?
I dunno, LB, this is pretty clearly falls within "problem" territory for me.
My whole 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. sugar thing is a problem. When I lived at the Mercer Hotel, they literally called an admin meeting on how to make the perfect warm sugar cookie for me in the middle of the night.
23: "Our two chief points of common interest are music, and dislike of chocolate, and addiction to heroin ... Our three chief common points of interest--"
Amy Sohn is just being Amy Sohn -- exhibitionistic, voyeuristic, sort of wanna-be slutty and wild but not really, a clever marketer. She was a sex columnist for the NY Press back in the 90s before she got married and her articles sounded identical. She's just figured out she can still write them in Park Slope.
I think the lesson is just that even after having kids people return to who they are, rather than morphing into some sort of role. Amy Sohn was sneaking a joint and the occasional line with other writers, talking about sex, pretending to be a rebel, and writing about it well before she had kids and now she's still doing it.
Oh, she's clearly a mess with serious problems, but I'm not seeing the 'wanting a cookie in the middle of the night and having the resources to make people cater to her fussiness about it' as a reason to hate her beyond the general hate for rich people. If she's dealing with people abusively, sure, hate her for that.
"Both 14 and 27 came from warm households and shared a common knowledge of Amy Sohn's past. What set them apart was about 30 minutes."
28: Isn't there territory between deliciously mockable and outright hatred? Can't she live there?
These women are the men their mothers divorced."--that's nicely done, I think.
For me, this is the line where I decided she was utterly deluding herself.
She went to my high school, to continue the week's high school theme. Three years behind me, though, so I didn't know her.
"After sharing many posts together but having little direct contact, one day they became separated from the rest of the group in a quiet thread and ended up, quite unexpectedly, having a long, drawn-out conversation."
If a nice hotel wants to cater to one of their wealthy clients who can list a specific preference, I'm not seeing the problem.
She's a mess and wealth is terribly distributed, but Courtney Love's lifestyle isn't high on my list of concerns. My guess is that if you don't like her anyway, this how she eats and her lack of awareness will also be irritating.
sneaking a joint and the occasional line with other writers
This idea of 'sneaking' something is a large part of what annoyed me in that article. So you smoked pot! So you did some lines! Who the fuck cares?
19 is brilliant! Wins the thread, perfect.
I have to admit that even though I always find Sohn's writing a little annoying, as a soon-to-be parent I find any discussion of Partying After Kids to be heartening. Not that kids themselves won't be fun. But I've been getting my first inklings of puritanical post-parental culture. Was over with another couple for this weird blind-date like ritual to check out a possible nanny share, and when I opened their fridge for some water the guy started assuring me that all the beer inside was non-alcoholic, except for 'just two bottles of alcoholic cider we bought for some guests, we have to get rid of those'. WTF, you're seriously telling me you won't have beer around because you have a two year old? Inviting this guy to my house would be like having CPS over.
31: Maybe this is foreshadowing and we're supposed to worry that their husbands will divorce them. Or feel smug that we can detect this telegraphed potential problem. I dunno.
28: If she's dealing with people abusively, sure, hate her for that.
That was what I was reading behind the necessity of an admin meeting to address that need. But yes, I am feeling somewhat defeated today by my apparent need to display my pathetic envy by lashing out in blog comments.
"You know something, Mr. Cunningham, entailments are being trolled is bad."
Don't you make a warm sugar cookie in the middle of the night by starting with a regular sugar cookie and putting it in the microwave for a few seconds? Or is that the way that the hoi polloi make warm sugar cookies?
Yikes! Having a nanny share that worked out would be awesome, but that sort of attitude toward alcohol seems like it could almost be a dealbreaker.
20: Needs a rewrite. (Two "feelings.") I shoulda previewed.
Actually I think it works quite well the way it's written.
So parents of older children aren't allowed to drink and have sex?
Is the penalty for drinking and having sex being the subject a lifestyle journalism piece? Is it being mocked by the unfoggedetariat?
Of course, you don't actually know whether that's his attitude toward alcohol, or whether he's defensively assuming it might be PGD's attitude, and doesn't want to mess up the nanny-share deal.
Is the penalty for drinking and having sex being the subject a lifestyle journalism piece? Is it being mocked by the unfoggedetariat?
As I understand it, it isn't the drinking and having sex that anyone here objects to.
42: What really got me was the judgmentalism about the sort of birth control people were using. Are there really enough people telling her they're neither using contraceptives nor planning to get pregnant that she can judge them as a class? That seemed like she had to be making it up.
This article about the awesome fun raunchy sextacular 40-year-old moms goes great with that article by Sandra Tsling Loh or whoever it was about how 40-year-old dads are now all boring and asexual and want to do gay things like cook while their aweseome wives sit around and complain and have affairs.
36: For what it's worth, our CPS caseworker likes a beer after her softball games, and she's even straight! The other CPS workers who are my facebook friends are lushier than I by far. But I'm also not an amazingly fun-having parent.
Good luck on the baby and your nanny options!
I thought it was an article about loathsome, desperate, raunchy sextacular forty-year-old moms.
If anyone says, "I have a great marriage but it takes a lot of work" it means they've cheated.
I really don't think so.
34.2: My guess is that if you don't like her anyway, this how she eats and her lack of awareness will also be irritating.
Actually she was someone who I was neutral-to-positive about. I guess it turns out I'm fine with her wanting to be "the girl with the most cake" unless it turns out that she actually wants to be the girl with the most cake.
Also at some level a warm cookie between 4 and 5 is the whole trajectory of the modern economic world writ small.
19 is brilliant! Wins the thread, perfect.
Actually, I think 33 is even better. (But yes, 19 gets it just right).
32: Betcha she cheated on the Regents exams.
after her softball games, and she's even straight!
Does not compute.
My wife is always going out with her friends like that minus the drugs. It is kind of odd. They are always flirting with the restaurant owner too. I don't have a very healthy marriage.
as a soon-to-be parent I find any discussion of Partying After Kids to be heartening.
Well, sure, but this discussion? Hopefully it is possible to do fun things--even ones involving the demon rum or REEFER--after having kids and not need to pass it off as a rebellious act of debauchery worthy of an article and/or a reaction to the horror of being a parent.
a soon-to-be parent
Clearly I've missed some developments. Mazel tov.
54: Leaving any comment on your marriage, which I don't know about, to one side, the going-out-solo bit does make sense for the babysitting reasons mentioned in the article. There's a marital issue if you're not spending time with your spouse, but it's completely sane for couples to do a certain amount of out-of-the-house, non-baby-friendly socializing individually rather than as a couple.
55, 57: Right. The people described don't seem to be particularly loathsome in general, but Sohn is for getting worked up about them.
and not need to pass it off as a rebellious act of debauchery worthy of an article and/or a reaction to the horror of being a parent
I think that aging is the elephant in the room. Not that you can entirely uncouple aging from being in a different life stage (i.e., parenthood), but still. Some of the women's behaviors she describes most derisively seem like they're more about proving one's continued attractiveness/sexiness as one ages (again hard to decouple from parenthood, but), and there is the constant comparison of them to their younger selves, and mentions of being in places full of twentysomething hipsters, as though the fortysomethings aren't supposed to be there.
1. Amy Sohn killed Kurt Cobain.
2. 40-year-old dads are now all boring and asexual and want to do gay things like cook while their aweseome wives sit around and complain and have affairs.
My refusal to cook, clean or care about cooking and cleaning must look pretty good now, eh, ladies? Eh?
Sigh.
60 is also correct! I will just sit here and nod at smearcase and Blume.
Hah. As someone exactly the age of the women in the article, I hadn't realized that the aging bit wasn't absolutely explicit. Yeah, a big part of what's going on is mocking the women described for acting as if they were still sexual in the same way twenty-somethings are, instead of recognizing, in a dignified fashion, that they're too old to be sexual.
That's what makes the mockery of women having sex with their own husbands make sense -- it's not that it's misbehavior by any sane standard, but Sohn's rolling her eyes at middle-aged-women for not recognizing that sex and drinking and fun generally are completely a thing of the past for them.
Right! And the inability to find a comfortable identity ('mom, writer, occasional cocaine user') seems all tied up with some unexamined notions of 'youth' and 'adulthood'.
as though the fortysomethings aren't supposed to be there
40-year-olds at a karaoke bar?! What's the world coming to?
To pick at Sohn a bit more, I think she's projecting on that front. While I didn't know her in high school, I've seen her give readings, back in her NY Press days, and she's very, very goodlooking. This article reads a bit like someone who's built up an identity in part around being youthfully gorgeous, is envisioning that slipping away with age and getting wrecked about it, and is transferring that anxiety outward onto her peers.
55, 60, and 62 are all correct. You guys are on fire. Oh, and 56.
Some days, I think I just hate writers, or at least the kinds of things that writers think they have to write. Can you just go and have a drink with your friends while having a kid without pitching a story and then writing it up as some kind of big fucking deal.
as a soon-to-be parent
I knew that you were happily coupled, PGD, but I didn't know that your partner was expecting. Congratulations!
OK, "while having a kid" may not have been the best-edited sentence of all time.
I do feel like this particular kind of article is connected to some weird thing that is very specific to a particular kind of person in New York, specifically. People get old and have kids and whatever everywhere but don't go around thinking that their angst has some kind of grand dramatic ubersignificance. I mean even in Hollywood you just accept that you're going to lose your looks, compensate in other ways, and get the fuck on with your life. That's what living is.
I hadn't realized that the aging bit wasn't absolutely explicit.
That's because the aging bit is absolutely explicit. The piece is weaker when it pretends to be a sober-minded evaluation of what desire and desirability mean to those to whom the culture does not covet. But it is strong as a burlesque of same.
seems all tied up with some unexamined notions of 'youth' and 'adulthood'.
Yes, of course it is. The piece works because the confusion of youth and adulthood is widespread and real. If it truly doesn't matter to you, if you have never noticed the awkwardness of continuing to play into adulthood, then congratulations and move along. But I definitely know young parents who continue to chase a dancing-on-the-table woo-hoo fishnets-and-heels dragon, and they exist in a range of legitimately more fun and annoyingly boring.
As I said above, the narrative parts of this are stronger than the sociological section, which is maybe what people are so put off by -- it does have a little more Sunday Styles wtf gravitas than warranted. But I think the overall tone is not the author setting herself above or apart from the people she's describing.
71: Sandra Tsing Loh is all on you, bub.
is pop sociology even worse than any other type of pop-discourse?
The Regressives article read completely different to me. The tone isn't critical -- it's aiming to be humorous but mildly titillating. The joke is supposed to be the incongruous juxtaposition of parenting details with details of partying -- like turning down a line of coke because you are cosleeping that night. The two lines "If anyone says, "I have a great marriage but it takes a lot of work" it means they've cheated." and "These women are the men their mothers divorced." are one-liners, not serious analysis.
|| Black people support Romney in email.|>
It's an article about "parents" completely indifferent to children. The author is stupid. Also shallow.
PGD, IME there won't be time for much drinking or other similar activity for the first few years, but you won't miss them. As the kid gets older, you'll probably get to do as much as you want to unless you have a problem. The parents of your kid's friends' will be all over the spectrum in personal style and in how sensible they are. Try not to sleep with the nanny.
Oooh, 73 is a fair jab. But everyone sane agrees that Sandra Tsing Loh is literally the most annoying person on earth. My hope that she will be court-ordered to take a vow of silence and live forever in a Trappist monastery far, far away from any possible communication with the outside world has not yet come to fruition.
72: Part of what annoyed me about it is the unexamined conflation of aging-meaning-becoming-less-desirable and aging-meaning-one-shouldn't-be-having-fun. Obviously, everyone in their adult life is slowly degenerating from their twenty-two-year-old peak of physical perfection and all that. But what that has to do with going, or not going, to karaoke bars is a little less clear, unless you think that doing things for fun is properly reserved for those at peak desirability.
I think there is a certain Gen-X-turns-forty Zeitgeist thing here that Sohn is tapping into, however hackily. There's a bit of a collective, "How did that happen?" Which leads to feelings of "Are we supposed to be extra grown-up now?" This almost certainly happens for every modern generation, but here we are now. So, as Blume and LB suggest, Sohn is likely fretting about herself and then projecting that onto others so that their behavior, which is what it's always been, but, because her insecurities are newish, seems novel to her.
78: I don't enjoy her radio persona, but I usually like her writing. So.
Well, you should be shot, then. I'm not gonna lie about my views.
80: Projecting? Like every writer, she's the voice of her generation! We weren't even sure what we were feeling until she told us.
Seems like my theorem that "junior high never ends, the stakes just get higher" has another couple proofs.
69: I sympathize, but even as I do, it occurs to me that (1) my preference for reading about "stuff that matters, and Brooklyn parenting conflicts don't matter" isn't all that far removed from the traditional sexist dismissal of women's (or non-white-heterosexual-landowners') concerns, thoughts and emotions, and (2) history is full of people who did interesting stuff, and wrote about it, and even abjured (or, ah, declined to be limited by the traditional bounds of) marriage and domesticity and the suffocating tedium of bourgeois life, who were nonetheless probably rather difficult to be friends with (e.g., inter alia, Ernest Hemingway, Beryl Markham, Ernst Jünger, Richard Francis Burton, Søren Kierkegaard, etc., etc.).
Where did Courtney Love get enough money to have servants and 3:00 am cookie deliveries?
I found this piece orders of margnitude more irritating than the Sandra Tsing-Loh piece, which I actually kind of liked.
79. The thing with aging, at least for me, is that I'm even less inclined now to yell "woo" (actually, women yell woo, dudes yell "yeah", well established mating calls-- anyway) or to stop whatever it is if I notice that someone is watching critically. Other than that, my son wakes up early most days and pretty nobody else I know still likes their music too loud.
That's because the aging bit is absolutely explicit.
I absolutely disagree. It is further from an honest examination (whatever rhetorical stance that might take) of being worried about aging than a mommies-gone-wild hit piece.
(actually, women yell woo, dudes yell "yeah", well established mating calls-- anyway)
Armsmasher lived in vain.
86: Actually, I was wondering about that a bit. I don't keep track of celebrities at all, but I'd had her in the "all screwed up and no longer with a career" box in my head, and this sounds like she's unambiguously rich and currently famous. No idea what the reality is.
86: Cough dead husband cough wasting minor child's inheritance cough.
86: Doesn't she get a few bucks every time a radio station plays "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?
69: Some days, I think I just hate writers, or at least the kinds of things that writers think they have to write.
I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here.
I think she recently sold her rights to the Nirvana catalog to her daughter in exchange for an allowance. Or something like that.
This almost certainly happens for every modern generation, but here we are now.
ENTERTAIN US.
These things are hard to tell through the media, but Frances Bean appears to be a lovely young woman with her head straight. Props to her.
Per 94:
Courtney Love exchanges publicity rights for a loan
80: Projecting? Like every writer, she's the voice of her generation! We weren't even sure what we were feeling until she told us.
She's thinkin' what we're all sayin'!
Believe she still owns a big chunk of the music publishing rights, but she sold away her ability to make decisions about licensing the catalog. Whence, the muppets spat.
95 is great.
CL has been in a long-running fight with the trust and the entities that hold publication rights to the catalog, which she's mostly lost but has gotten some cash settlements from fairly recently. But she's also undoubtedly living well beyond her means, unsurprisingly. I have heard (third hand, no personal knowledge at all) that she is a nightmare to work with and routinely stiffs her lawyers and other people who work for her.
" the going-out-solo bit does make sense for the babysitting reasons mentioned in the article."
It completely makes sense.
"a big part of what's going on is mocking the women described for acting as if they were still sexual in the same way twenty-somethings are"
I don't think the author is mocking the women. I think what is going on is the natural reaction to sexless marriages. If they were not married with kids they would just break up. But they are so there is just some shenanigans that stops or doesn't before divorce.
Although she's also explicitly mocking? commenting on? women for having sex with their husbands.
It's an article about "parents" completely indifferent to children.
This was one of my favorite aspects of Scenes from a Marriage.
Maybe Courtney Love is like the shiftless English nobility in Regency novels, always living above their means because someone is always willing to extend them credit for their name.
I didn't know the dead husband had manservant money. I could have sworn I read somewhere that the estate was worth something like $1.6 million dollars at the time of Cobain's death. Which isn't anything to sneeze at, but doesn't seem like it would still be buying heroin and midnight cookies now almost 20 years later.
There is the possibility that I am misremembering the number, but I doubt it because I remembering thinking at the time that I read it it seemed very low. There is also the possibility that whatever I read was wrong about the number. There is also the possibility that she has made more money than I realize in her own right, as a washed-up former celebrity. There is also the possibility that the value of her Cobain's estate has increased over time, although I'm not sure why that would be. Those are the possibilities.
Some of the numbers in the link in 97 are larger.
What is the minimum amount of money that can properly be considered "a fortune"?
Twenty percent more than whatever you've got.
The $1.6 million (I don't know if that's right) was most likely Cobain's then-current assets, not the publishing rights and the publicity rights, which is where the money is. But (again, I don't have insider knowledge here, just informed guessing) she is probably not very wealthy by rich person's standards [preemptive strike: Parsimon, consider your comment already made]-- my very rough guess would be that she's gotten about $15 million total in cash over the past two or three years and that those are basically all of her assets, and she's depleting them quickly.
The $1.6 million (I don't know if that's right) was most likely Cobain's then-current assets
Ah, that's probably right.
$15 million in cash clearly qualifies as "a fortune".
109: I don't know what the number is, but I'd say whatever amount can be put in low-risk investments and still provide enough income to both add to capital somewhat and pay a noticeable portion of the costs of a middle-class lifestyle is a 'small fortune', and it goes up from there. Somewhere around a million? Four percent on a million gets you forty thousand a year to either spend or add to savings?
This claims she made $50 million or more in a rights sale 6 years ago:
I think that counts as "a fortune" that would be hard to plow through in 6 years.
That $50 million number is almost certainly wrong. I don't know what the right number is, but I would not trust that number at all.
For an alternate earworm, the Bay Area version (in some sense) of this is learning the can-can to "It's a Dead Man's Party".
I should say that the BA burlesquers I actually know seem to be unconflicted in their relationships and their kids are, on the whole, age-appropriately well-mannered.
(Burlesque still gets right up my youngest-2nd-Wave nose, because I do not see any change in who's subject and who's object, but it's not like I keep seeing horrible outcomes.)
The $1.6 million (I don't know if that's right) was most likely Cobain's then-current assets, not the publishing rights and the publicity rights, which is where the money is.
What assets did he have OTHER than the publishing rights and publicity rights? A gold record? Heroin?
A house, I guess.
This article says the Cobain estate is worth an estimated $450 million, which, Jesus Christ, apparently I should have been a rock star. That seems outrageous. How the hell could it be worth that much?
Are people still buying Nirvana's music, in meaningful quantities?
He probably still had a lot of money from his advance, in addition to the house+whatever else. I did a little quick checking but the numbers floating around on the public internet for the value of her assets and her share of the Nirvana rights look absurdly high.
(By 'this' I meant the lookamee! Sohn article.)
101: I met someone once who was her roommate pre-rock-star, who said the same thing. She owed him a thousand dollars in rent and bills. He was not optimistic he would ever get paid, even after Hole signed with Geffen.
119 -- Again, I would guess that $450 million number is way, way off. Probably the total value of all future rights to the band and Cobain combined is around $200 million (this is a pure guess, but an informed one) and by the time you dig down to the share held by Frances Bean or sold by Courtney Love, you are talking about way way way less money.
Re 101, 122:
Former Assistant Sues Courtney Love
"Our two chief points of common interest are music, and dislike of chocolate, and addiction to heroin ... Our three chief common points of interest--"
Shotguns? Or maybe that was just him.
Try not to sleep with the nanny.
...unless your wife wants in on that action in which case game on.
In the fall I'll have a 10th and an 8th grader. We do way more drinking and good times now than we did in our early 20's when we were way poorer with young kids. I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
I think that counts as "a fortune" that would be hard to plow through in 6 years.
TRY ME.
56 is exactly right. How soon?
Any day now -- I have entered the Keep Your Cell Phone Charged At All Times stage of impending parenthood.
Some days, I think I just hate writers
Writers are by definition very self-centered and potentially annoying people. THE WORLD MUST HEAR MY STRAY THOUGHTS is a precondition for success in the field.
desperate, raunchy sextacular forty-year-old moms
I find this hot. Hopefully that is the stage of life my partner will enter in a few years.
...unless your wife wants in on that action in which case game on.
This is TMI, but on a PPV channel I saw a movie called something like "MILF Teen Threesome Hunters", which I did NOT buy but when I clicked on the summary to decipher the title the helpful explanation informed me that it was about "hot moms who seek out 18+ teenagers to bring home to their husbands". Porn is getting ever more efficient in microtargeting the fantasies of middle aged males.
I think that counts as "a fortune" that would be hard to plow through in 6 years.
The Count of Monte Cristo might agree.
Oh my god. 128 comments already?
All I was going to say is that I never did like that Courtney Love person.
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Josh, I think your email has been hacked.
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I for one was happy to learn about an exciting new job opportunity.
CL seems mentally ill. I'm not sure whether she sounds horrible as a person, but her life sure sounds awful. I guess she should enjoy her warm 4 a.m. sugar cookies and leg rubs now, because she'll be begging Frances Bean for a living allowance a few years on.
I would also like to endorse the awesomeness of 95.
Scrolling up to find the referent for 132, I got as far as 128.4, and thought it better to just stop.
WRT the OP, I guess I shouldn't be too judgmental about the circumstances that might lead to sexless marriages (and how people respond to them), but 'I'm married to a person who is my age, and is not an unstable or dangerous young stranger' isn't one I find particularly sympathetic. It's not that we expect old people to accept their undesirability: we expect them to behave with a certain dignity/maturity. Partying (absent special circumstances) til 3 am on a weeknight seems more pathetic than exciting.
Or, the old people could just do Crossfit and become awesome, like these older badasses.
I mean, check out John Lugg. A genuine Welsh badass.
139: As opposed to a certain owl aficionado?
Hardarson, 55, of Kopavogur, Iceland, spends his days fishing on the rugged, cold northern coastline. When Leifur Geir Hafsteinsson, his coach at CrossFit Sport, first met Hardarson, he was convinced he'd found a former gymnast. He was wrong. Outside of the toil of fishing, Hardarson never played sports and, for many years, was overweight. Ten years ago, when he weighed 220 pounds, Hardarson decided he needed to lose weight. He did it the hard way. Each morning, he took off on his boat without any food. In time, Hardarson lost 66 pounds and became active in hiking, running, mountain climbing, CrossFitting, and biking.
Suck it, Brooklyn. Icelandic fishermen FTW.
140: That hardly makes up for Bjork.
Sure, but even Leifur Hafsteinsson is no match for Skallagrim Kveldulfsson:
Skallagrim was a greatblacksmith and used in winter to smelt a lot of bog-iron. He had a smithy built close to the sea but well away from Borg. It was at a place called Raufarness where it seemed to him the woods were closer than at Borg, but he couldn't find a boulder hard and smooth enough to hammer the iron on, as there are no sizeable stones on the beach there, only fine sand. One evening when everyone else had gone to bed, Skallagrim went down to the shore and launched and eight-oared ship that he had. He rowed it out to Midfjord Isles and dropped anchor from the bows. Then he stepped overboard, dived down into the sea and came up with a boulder which he loaded on to the ship. After that he climbed back aboard, rowed up to the mainland, carried the boulder to his smithy, set it down outside the door, and used it to hammer his iron. The boulder still lies there with a pile of slag alongside it, and the hammer-marks can be seen on the top. It has been polished by the waves and there's no other stone there like it. Four men nowadays couldn't life it.
Oh, I should have spoken of Hildar Hardarson in my last comment but one. My mistake.
Independent people, those Icelanders.
Wait--I haven't read the linked article yet, but I'm confused . . . the reason the karaoke bar thing is funny is because it's something only hip 20 year olds are supposed to do?
Oh, it's The Awl. (Which admittedly is often readable, but they do have a very strange hipster ideology going on there.)
I'm going to a hipster bar right now, and I'm thirty. Wish me luck, guys!
MY WORD IS MY BJORK.
It is within the realm of possibility that someone might drop off multiple cases of PBR at my work this weekend, with only me to take care of them. Since I am a childless anarchist in my late thirties, I think all the various hipster tropes cancel each other out, and there's actually zero irony involved.
Good luck, PGD. The nanny-share/alcohol encounter is weird, but I've lately been encountering that attitude - the idea that with a small child in the house it's flat-out irresponsible for someone to get a buzz on, because at any moment you might suddenly need to be Responsible. So, sure, don't all get totally wasted. My beer-universe context makes me think of this as a kind of neo-Prohibitionism, but it's probably better thought of as a perfect-parenting neurosis rather than connected to that world.
150: My version of it is that there needs to be at least one parent legally capable of driving to the ER should the need arise, which seems like a reasonable bar. (And is there a bar called A Reasonable Bar? I would totally go there on a night off, though I blew my last one on the innocuous Aubrey Plaza movie I'd have found offensive a few years ago.)
145
Nice Laxness reference. ;)
PGD
If it makes you feel better, there's a picture from my brother's baby album of him a bit over a year old wearing a hat my parents made for him out of a cardboard beer box. Apparently the beer had gone into the bathtub with a bunch of ice, and the hat seemed like a good idea after a night of drinking. My parents also managed to get my brother drunk at age 3. He was the oldest, but even with three small children they kept up a lively social life with moderate amounts of drinking. They were otherwise devoted MC parents, but they definitely didn't think the world revolved around their children.
And is there a bar called A Reasonable Bar?
This seems to be one of those questions that are impossible to answer by googling, which makes perfect sense, of course.
Is the math in 114 correct? My sense is that $1MM, even managed well, doesn't get you all that much*. I guess $40k/year might not count as "that much", but then we've circled back around to whether or not it's a fortune, even a small one.
I guess my take is that $40k doesn't allow anyone to live without careful budgeting unless they are obligation-free and naturally thrifty. And I have trouble defining a fortune as something that merely allows someone in the (true) middle class to live a better, but still middle class, lifestyle. A windfall, perhaps, but not a fortune.
* this is all setting aside taxes, of course; we might have to increase all of these numbers by 15% or even 25%
they definitely didn't think the world revolved around their children.
If I'm honest, I admit that we fail this test, but I do think this is the correct test. Better for kids and parents alike.
Ours have always been the birthday parties where parents didn't drop off their kids, because there'd be booze* and good food available. For the most part, we've treated our kids' birthdays as small versions of our own parties, but in the day and with a guest list focused on families with kids. Are we part of an exciting trend, or merely ordinary parents lacking a hip narrator?
* mostly wine, but other stuff available
You're all out doing coke and having sex with each other, aren't you?
My sense is that $1MM, even managed well, doesn't get you all that much*.
Really? I guess I'd have to disagree. As an inheritance or a windfall or whatever, $1MM sounds like quite the pretty penny to me. Is it enough to allow you to quit your job and never work again? No, probably not. Almost certainly not if you're encumbered with a mortgage and with children (start saving, PGD! those little bundles of joy are expensive...and then you have to send them to college). But as an addition to one's regular income, a million dollars, if carefully managed, would provide a significant cushion.
and then you have to send them to college
OR you can send them to the graphene mines!
Graphene mines are like coal mines where you remove the coal one piece of tape at a time?
Speaking of horrible people, what on Earth is a "non-cognitive elite"?
131, 132: The title of the OP is completely apropos for fucking spammers. Thanks for the heads up.
what on Earth is a "non-cognitive elite"?
The Arizona State Legislature?
I think there might be something to be said for the idea that "a fortune" (small or otherwise), as opposed to mere delightsome wealth, starts at the point where it allows you to live comfortably on it alone. Of course comforts vary. I like to think in terms of what it would take to fund an endowed chair for me, me, glorious me. (Anyone seeking to create an endowed chair of puttering would, I think, find me a most desirable candidate.)
It's not my fault I didn't see your comment. I was in the wilderness.
I suppose that's a reasonable excuse.
The hell it is. Who was responsible for your being in the wilderness?
that "a fortune" (small or otherwise), as opposed to mere delightsome wealth, starts at the point where it allows you to live comfortably on it alone.
Or, as a 19th-century British novelist* might have called it, "a competence," or "an ample competence."
*But not an American novelist, whether great or small, of that same period. He (or she?) was too busy writing about sperm whales and neurotic Puritans.
cognitive elite is a bell curve term"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_elite
Both articles seem designed to make the reader think that the media's collective decision to exclude the voices of middle-aged women is, in fact, rather wise.
what on Earth is a "non-cognitive elite"?
"Rich and thick, like clotted cream" is the expression round these parts.
And mainly composed of clots. And automatically rises to the top.
"she'll be begging Frances Bean for a living allowance a few years on."
maybe she won't, she seems a naturally unsympathetic person, just one of the ordinary aging women in the second post, more spoiled than them with fame and money, and as if like she knows that money elicits always some kind of envy feeling in the celebrities following public so exploits that envy whenever possible, so perhaps that's why the first post draws more hatred than the second one where there is nothing to be excited about
so she seems a character not accustomed to begging anything from anyone, if she were a shallow being obsessed with just money perhaps KB wouldn't have been her husband, but what do i know of course, i remember watching his unplugged on MTV, that's all, just her separation with her kid? i remember reading a few years ago seems like empathy inducing, but if a drug addict she maybe gave up her custody half voluntarily
and that aide suing her in the link presented to show how antisocial she is, perhaps, got what she deserved
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I am now working across from what I believe may be the most anachronistic (is that the right word?) small-town lawyer in the country. The matter is only a few hours old, and here's what I've experienced so far:
(1) The first thing he mentioned when he called me to introduce himself is that he has neither an email address nor a fax machine. He wants all documents send by mail. Other correspondence needs to be either in person, by telephone, or in the form of physical letters.
(2) Given the constraints in (1), we both agreed that an in-person multi-day conference makes sense, to work through a lot of the issues. (My client is buying some very valuable assets from his client.) Since his office is absolutely in the middle of nowhere, I thought a meeting at my office might make sense. But he cut off this idea before I even suggested it, since he is a self-described "very heavy smoker", and so he doesn't like spending time in the "modern" office buildings that prohibit smoking. He says he's tried in the past to have meetings in buildings that prohibit smoking, but he finds the experience "unproductive". So, he wants to meet at his office.
(3) I'm not yet sold on (2)--given (1), I suspect his office may have technological constraints that would make work difficult for me. (Somehow I doubt he has wi-fi.) So, I may see if my assistant can find a local hotel here that has a conference room in which they allow smoking. But, entertaining the idea of meeting at his office, I asked if he knew the closest hotel to stay in, since as I said, his office is in the middle of nowhere. He acted as if the very question was preposterous, and insisted that I would of course stay in his home. He assured me that I would be very comfortable, and that his wife is an excellent cook. He asked me if I like pork roast, because his wife makes the best pork roast in the whole county.
I honestly don't know what to do with this. There seems to be a Holiday Inn about 25 miles from his office. Although, who knows, staying in his house and having his wife's famous pork roast would probably be more interesting than staying in the Holiday Inn. I'm just not even sure if that's appropriate. And now I'm afraid that if I'm able to find some conference room here that permits smoking, and tried to go in that direction--will he expect to stay in my house?
The whole thing is just bizarre.
|>
I dunno, I'm sort of charmed. You stay in his house and take copious notes and report back everything.
Think of yourself as Abraham Lincoln on the circuit court. But yeah, take notes. Better yet get an air card* and liveblog.
*Also solves your tech problem, assuming there is cellular coverage.
assuming there is cellular coverage.
And electricity.
Also solves your tech problem
How would I print a document, if there's no way to email it to someone to have it printed? Maybe I could connect to one of his printers with a physical cable. Maybe. Or maybe I could take a portable printer. But I'm just anticipating hassles.
And honestly I'm not sure the assumption of reliable cellular coverage is a safe one. I happened to be, not there, but not far from there, recently, and had very spotty coverage.
This scenario sounds familiar from movies. Is there any reason why you would be a particularly appealing candidate for a coven of witches and/or satanists to csacrifice?
Explain that your plumbing expertise is as renowned as the wife's cooking, and obviously sewers and electrical communication lines are very similar. Then bring a generator and microwave link hardware, install them yourself in 2 hours before communication ensues.
If they ask for a blood sample, they are stealing organs.
I dunno, I'm sort of charmed.
Sort of, except the thing is, I feel like he's just being obstinate about the smoking. I've never met anyone who was unable to refrain from smoking long enough to sit through meetings productively, especially when they were able to call for smoke breaks whenever they wanted. Take a break every half-hour! I don't care. But no, he insisted that he actually needs to be able to smoke during the meetings; breaks aren't good enough.
Honestly, I'd just call and ask about wi-fi access and printer access, and see what he says. If he shares an office with anyone else, they probably have all that stuff. Especially if he has an assistant you can talk to. If not, you find a hotel conference room.
But you definitely allow him to cajole you into staying at his house, with the pork roast and wooden geese with bows round their necks. They'll put you up in a room decorated with dusty rose and slate blue, primarily, with a dried floral arrangement sitting in a fake rustic wagon. The window headers will match the bedskirt, and there will be an awful lot of pillows on the bed. But it will be very charming, still.
I want some of the negotiations to take place shoveling pig shit out beyond the barn.
Also, fax machines went mainstream in the late 1970s. How can he not have a fax machine? (Never mind the email address...)
I'm curious as to the location--thinking it might be in the general vicinity of the location in this profile. Although the presence of "very valuable assets" would indicate otherwise.
Yeah, I'm mainly very impressed that he can earn a living under those constraints. Maybe his house and office are in a place where the fabric of time has worn thin, and so he actually lives in 1960?
I also want him to be played by Robert Duvall.
I suspect that he is probably a vampire, of the pre-sexy, purely sinister type. The reason he has no electronics is that he has only just come to terms with using a fountain pen, after doing just fine with a quill for hundreds of years. The heavy pall of smoke disguises the fact that he casts no shadow.
If you go and stay with him, the accoutrements in the guest room will be as heebie describes, but his own accommodation will look rather different. You would be advised not to fall asleep.
Strong case for the Holiday Inn here.
180--Clearly this is one of those instances where the lawyer turns out to be on of (a) a serial killer abducting clients and murdering them, (b) the head of a secret government facility which is located in a cavernous hideaway underneath his unassuming office building, (c) your long-lost Daddy, (d) an Angel or God of some kind, or (e) David Souter.
But come on, think of how utterly crappy any hotel conference where they allowed smoking would be. So some sub-industrial bunker on the outskirts of your fair city vs. Mayberry R.F.D.?
180 sounds great. You should definitely visit Unfrozen Victorian Lawyer - I agree with heebie's predictions. Suggest having the meetings in the open air. ("It's a nice day, why don't we talk this over on the back forty?") Or on a raft moored in the middle of a river, as with the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), because you definitely need to come back with some of your own weird preconditions to avoid him gaining the upper hand. ("This is Surendhra-ji, my spiritual advisor. He'll be sitting in on the conveyancing negotiations with his badger, Bubbles.")
197 also rings true, especially if you've read "Dracula" which opens with the naive, urplish Jonathan Harker liveblogging his business trip to see an eccentric nobleman who wants to buy some expensive real estate in England.
I don't know what the joke is, but the word "Ejacula" just sprung to mind.
This sounds like a weirdo hardball negotiating tactic -- you'll be so offbalance staying in his house that you'll sign anything. I'd go to his office, but stay in the Holiday Inn.
203: Jesus fuck. Sensible people are arriving.
It's not my fault I didn't see your comment. I was in the wilderness.
It can't have been all that wilderness if you came back.
Ol' Buzzkill LB, shows up and puts a stake right through Ejacula's (throbbing) heart.
there is a wifi router like thing, portable, looks like a small usb flash to plugin and have you wifi wherever coverage is available, no?
Or, another possible tactic would be staying in his house and refusing to leave. Finding additional terms to quibble about forever until he'll sign anything to make you go away. This could work, or depending on how it works out you could inherit the farm when the emphysema gets him.
Or stay at his house but bring garlic and a crucifix? Perhaps also a silver bullet, if it's going to be around a full moon. Never hurts to cover all bases.
Ejacula
Melville/Stoker slash fiction morphs into the Great American Novel.
"Oh, that's just urple. He turned up a few years back - darned if I can remember why - and, well, we kinda got used to him. Now he helps out round the place."
(from offstage: ominous plumbing noises)
"Just stay away from my three daughters."
You guys have him preparing for some old-world dark arts menace when it's Boss Hogg he is going up against. Regional Stereotype Empathy Fail.
He turned up a few years back - darned if I can remember why - and, well, we kinda got used to him.
"The first time we asked him to change the towels - hoo-boy! But we learned to say undust the furniture, unlight the lights, close the drapes, and things like that. As far as Mr. Rogers was concerned, all that was important was that Urple kept making that lemon-merengue pie!"
Rural Lawyer: Well, I'm no fancy big-city lawyer...
Everyone else in courtroom: WE KNOW. WE MOVED THE COURTROOM TO YOUR FRONT PARLOR SO YOU COULD USE YOUR LEVER-OPERATED FLOOR SPITTOON. NOW GET ON WITH IT.
Or, another possible tactic would be staying in his house and refusing to leave.
Pretend to slip on the ice on your way in. That way you can stay forever. You can ensure that you win your case by threatening to expose his sister as an axe murderer. If anybody offers to show you a play he's written, don't let it be read by any colleagues you value, but otherwise you can't lose.
I love it. Stay at his place -- why not. The lack of outside world access gives you a great negotiation play; "I hear what you're saying, but I can't agree to anything until I hear from my client via the Wells Fargo wagon coming into town next week."
Not really the same thing, but I've been in a multimillion dollar case now for a few years where the opposing counsel has a mindspring account that he checks exactly once per day.
Now he helps out round the place.
Evan Urple Kirk is looking for work,
Work? What can he do?
For a dollar a day
He will hammer away
At woodwork, doors and walls
And for a few cents more
He will paint the hall
And nail down all the stairs
...
The little dear
Has been working here
For a year,
No, almost two.
And you couldn't foresee
How glad we'd be
To send him to work on you.
Pretend to slip on the ice on your way in. That way you can stay forever.
"I saw something nasty in the pre-trial discovery phase!"
184: And honestly I'm not sure the assumption of reliable cellular coverage is a safe one.
So, look... it... up.
Verizon has a searchable coverage map.
So does Cingular.
So do Sprint and T-Mobile, and probably the minor carriers do too.
Clearly the solution is to have the meeting at Churchill Downs.
Wait, they've banned smoking there, too? Where does one go to find old-fashioned Southern gentlemen enjoying their tobacco in the manner to which they are accustomed?
180: By the way, are you sure the offer is sincere? You have declined at least once, right? The pro forma "no, I couldn't impose."
The map in 223 indicates that cell coverage (Verizon) is somewhere between spotty and unavailable.
I guess all the hideous old once-posh hotels have banned smoking now too.
225:
Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."
226: I definitely tried to decline and pry hotel information out of him, but he repeatedly waived off the question. I later looked up the Holiday Inn myself.
I mean, everything was left up in the air. I didn't even agree that we'll meet in his office instead of mine. I just said we'll have to figure out what to do, given all the constraints.
Mostly I just wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible so that I could post comment 180.
Bring your bolo tie in case Rural Lawyer and the missus take you two-stepping at the local watering hole. And dance with that real pretty little thing that's looking your way, dance with her good! But at the end of the night, say "OTOH, there's a golden band."
Is it even appropriate for opposing counsels to be so bound by hospitality and gratitude and all that? It's not like you can expense your client for the cost of a pork roast that the other side's wife cooked.
Yeah, don't pay no mind to them New York women and their high-falutin' ways.
Speaking of which, the profile I linked in 194 has an awesomely pathetic trip to New York for the Macy's parade by the family from Outer Urplelandia.
They hadn't known it would cost $12 in tolls just to get into New York City or $40 for parking. They couldn't really see the parade from their crowded spot along Broadway, except Ciara, who perched on top of a postal box. She held a two-year-old from South Carolina in her lap. They were cold and miserable. They got lost and turned around in traffic and yelled at by a lady police officer they asked for help. The next day, they went to see the Empire State Building, but it cost $23 to go to the top, so they passed. They decided to go to the Statue of Liberty but were, again, put off by the cost. Sue skipped lunch--she said she wasn't hungry--and the rest followed her lead and skipped lunch, too. Kody said that they wouldn't have wanted to be shocked by the check anyway. During the few days they spent in New York, they often didn't eat until 11 at night, when they got back to the New Jersey hotel and picked up food from a nearby Subway. Their first advice to others when they got back to Booneville was "Don't go--stay home and watch it on TV."
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Was this dinosaur-related link posted here earlier?
|>
Dunno. Discerning people read Darren Naish as a matter of course.
Oh, if this is the thread for dinosaur-related links, here is some dinosaur porn, complete with pictures of mating t-rexes looking lovingly into each others' eyes.
[M]ost researchers have concluded that dinosaurs made love like dogs.
'All dinosaurs used the same basic position to mate,' said Dr Beverly Halstead, an English researcher who was one of the first to tackle the subject. 'Mounting from the rear, he put his forelimbs on her shoulders, lifting one hind limb across her back and twisting his tail under hers.'....
'It must have been a hell of a thing to see.'
That profile was heartbreaking, Stormcrow.
238 strikes me as a bit of a sob story. Really? You sat outside for hours in late November in New York City and you were cold? What a mean, nasty town! Tourist attractions that everyone in the universe knows of are expensive and crowded? Hard times!
242: It caught my eye as that was the specific county where my church had an "outreach" arrangement with a local church of the same denomination. So I spent some time there as a teenager as did other members of my family.
243: It reads a bit different in the context of the whole profile.
Although I have known several people who have had somewhat more well-funded versions of that trip when they visited New York.
243: It really is true, what they say about NYC making people cold and heartless!
243, 245: It really is not about NYC--just very poor country folk on an extraordinarily naively-conceived vacation recounted as part of a profile of their life.
But I think I'm really just paying the price for making the aspirational 4 AM warm cookie remark...
An aunt took me on a trip to NYC as a high school graduation present. I was shocked by the $45 menu items etc. I about died when I saw the price on my ticket to the ballet.
I am also surprised that it costs $23 to go to the top of the Empire State Building. I mean wtf? You can go to the top of the Washington Monument or ATL city hall for free.
I thought the Washington Monument was closed to tourists for the next 85 years because of that tiny earthquake.
Maybe this means I'm a naive redneck, but I literally just this minute discovered that the Empire State Building is not a publicly owned building. I was completely taken in by the name "____________ State Building".
Could be worse. I've lived in NYC my whole life, and yet I've never figured out why "Empire" state. I don't think we ever had an empire of our own, per se. (The answer's probably on wikipedia, but I think I've tried to look it up and never found anything informative.)
I've stayed with clients a couple of times, and there are some opposing lawyers I'd enjoy a raft trip with, I think. Never had that invitation, though. I say go. At worst, you get a story to dine out on. It's not like you're going to bind the client to anything strange.
You can't lie to his face ever after eating at his table, but this isn't a problem for you anyway, right?
No idea why the system thinks I'm "tr."
I always assumed "the Empire State" was a reference to its pre-Independence importance to the British Empire. But it may just be that someone thought it had a nice, grandiose ring to it, which apparently was the origin of the "Inland Empire" in California.
252 -- I thought it was because of its vast size (for, say, 1820) and thus purportedly imperial aspirations. Why, it stretches all the way to Jamestown! Further north than Plattsburgh! Surely the behemoth of commerce and prosperity that is western and northern New York shall create a veritable new Roman Empire!
George Washington, on April 10, 1785.
Well New York is the Empire State in the same way that New Jersey is the Garden State and Florida is the Sunshine State. Which raises the further question of why.
But it sorta kinda explains the building.
Connecticut is the Nutmeg State because nutmeg used to be really expensive.
Indiana is the Hoosier State because Hoosiers are residents of Indiana.
From the Wikipedia list, surely Delaware has the best collection of state nicknames:
Chemical Capital[23]
Corporate Capital (due to the state's business-friendly laws)[23]
Diamond State (allusion to the state flag)[23]
Blue Hen State or Blue Hen Chicken State[24]
The First State[25][23] (Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution; currently used on license plates)
Home of Tax Free Shopping[23]
New Sweden[23]
Peach State[23]
Small Wonder[23]
Wyoming is the Equality State because they let women vote in 1869.
I'm taken aback by the argument that $40k a year without work isn't a fortune. Surely you don't actually need to afford a house manager to consider yourself rich? (Is there any room between 'not really rich' and 'horribly rich' here?)
Delaware has the best collection of state nicknames
Georgia would like a word regarding Delaware's claims to any state nickname involving peaches, chickens, or chemicals.
I'm with you, obviously, but to argue the other side: if you ignore the fact that you own the capital, and just think of it as an addition to income, an additional $25K or so after taxes, while really nice, wouldn't change most people's sense of their own income from not-rich to rich.
Iowa is the Hawkeye state in honor of Black Hawk's failed attempt to reconquer parts of Illinois and Wisconsin.
Missouri is the Show Me State as an expression of their distrust of other people.
Oklahoma is the Sooner State in honor of the way that its first white settlers broke the law.
I'm taken aback by the argument that $40k a year without work isn't a fortune.
My thought was that it constitutes "wealth" (you're rich!) rather than "a fortune" (you may well live on nothing but it for the duration).
Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, because it's where Lincoln Logs were invented.
Not to mention: good luck getting a safe 4% annual return these days. Unless you do something risky with it, you'd be lucky to get $10,000 in annual income from out of your $1,000,000 "fortune". And that's not going to keep pace with inflation. If you buy inflation-adjusted treasuries, your return is currently negative.
I always sort of assume that rich people have access to higher returns than us plebs -- look at Mitt Romney's hundred million dollar IRA, achieved by conscientiously putting in the maximum $2,000 every year and investing wisely.
But okay, $10,000,000 as a 'fortune'?
271 is wrong. US Muni bonds yield above 3.85% tax-free, not risky in any conventional sense.
look at Mitt Romney's hundred million dollar IRA, achieved by conscientiously putting in the maximum $2,000
Huh. I was wondering if it was worth a post, but I figured everyone had seen it.
I would not want to stay in the house, because he's smoking there.
I don't think $1,000,000 in investable assets affords you "$100,000,000 IRA" levels of sophisticated financial planning. And as far as private equity investments go, at that level of wealth you won't have that much open to you that Joe Plebe doesn't have--you're an accredited investor (probably), but you're not a qualified purchaser under Section 2(a)(51) of the Investment Company Act and you're probably not a a qualified client under Rule 205-3 of the Investment Advisers Act. So a lot of the better investment managers won't touch your money.
I do not, in fact, know much of anything about how rich people manage their money. I've met some rich people, but that's it.
I've heard they try to buy low and sell high.
Speaking of things that might be worth a post, but maybe everyone's seen, I was looking at this study out of UCLA on middle class life in Los Angeles. There's a follow-up here that says that people recognize themselves in the findings.
The findings entirely match up with my generalizations about suburbia, but I don't understand how it comes to pass. Where is the breakdown in awareness that lets people misallocate their resources away from their happiness like this? Why don't they recognize that their overcrowded kitchen annoys them everyday, and they wouldn't really use a master suite? What is overriding the daily cues (fuck, I stepped on the dog again as I reached for the toaster and I can't fucking pull out my chair and I have no storage space because of the kids' fucking toys.) that should direct their remodels or purchases?
No. You will not get a follow up, no matter how you beg.
It's not clear whether any investment managers who follow the rules give a lasting advantage.
280. Happiness stops being especially important to many people. This is not necessarily a mistake; ambition and duty are parts of adult life, among other things.
That's interesting.
I assume people spend lots of money for "master suites" because they figure it will increase the likelihood of them having sex.
That might be the thinking, but I can't see how it would work. Are people aroused by large rooms with attached bathrooms?
(I'm sounding snotty, but I do mean that I literally don't get it. I could see spending on a nice bed, but beyond that?)
282: That's the same study that fueled the New Yorker about how much American parents suck, right? Previously on Unfogged here.
Looking at my response to that and comparing it to my response to this, I find that Heebie and I have opposite responses to being told that people like us suck.
To be fair, Heebie may be more indignant since she is an actual parent and I am only pre-pregnant. But I think I'm temperamentally more eager for a style-section lashing.
I think the theory is that if you have a well-appointed cave that looks like a nicer room at a Wyndham Inn, you can retreat from your kids and have hot sex without the kids hearing you.
I'm just hypothesizing here; my bedroom is old school, though the sleeping porch has become a clothes closet.
I could see that having a bathroom attached to the bedroom--and importantly, unavailable to the rest of the house--might increase your chances of having sex, or at least lessen the chance of being embarrassed apràs sex.
Halford, is this your gym?!
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/07/crossfit_homeless_facebook_pictures.php
290-292: Oh, fair enough -- a setup that assures reasonable privacy makes sense. But that doesn't really require a large room; the master suites they're talking about seem like overkill.
an additional $25K or so after taxes, while really nice, wouldn't change most people's sense of their own income from not-rich to rich.
It's not the additional money that makes you rich, it's the not having to work for it, which gives you much more strategic freedom in deciding how to apply oneself to ambition and/or duty (alas, how often they collide). Starting a business without going into debt, doing an internship, moving the place with your career but no jobs, etc etc. Or just not having to take stupid orders. Or living somewhere quiet, working only while the kids are in school, doing amazing things with them in the summers.
291: Did I mention, last year when my father was staying with us after his hip-replacement surgery, heading for the bathroom under just such circumstances and running into him also heading for the bathroom? I've never felt so teenaged-embarrassed in my life.
From Megan's link, the bit about master suites -- "yet, the suites were rarely used, except for sleeping" -- is a bit puzzling. What else would a bedroom suite be used for (assuming they left "and fucking" off the description out of tact)?
296: Hott.
From the bit about their being designed to imitate hotels, I assumed the master suites were built to be clutter-free spaces.
293 -- uh. Wow. What a horrible story. They should probably also have mentioned that (a) the gym trained 3 homeless guys, for free, and literally helped turn their lives around completely; (b) there are homeless people who regularly run into the gym, have assaulted folks, etc.
The story is horrible for many reasons beyond that. I mean posing with people unconscious on the sidewalk that you've thrown a Crossfit tshirt on top of?
280: American life is like an unhappiness machine. What is detailed in that report is the direct result of advertising pressure (sedentary television, massive clutter, bulk stockpiling, prioritizing fantasy 'suites' over ordinary life, endless snacking over mealtimes), plus work / time stresses. As part of my domestic life I have suddenly living a more 'suburban' life than I ever have before (got cable TV for the first time ever, moved to a bigger place, started to stockpile stuff for the kid, lots of presents from family, etc.) and I can see these pressures in my own life all of a sudden.
297: The suites have a ton of additional area beyond the bed. Maybe that's room for aspirational yoga, meditating, reading and long conversations with the adult partner.
The piece is a smear piece. I don't really want to go into detail here, but would be happy to do so in email. While I don't condone the photographs I know for a fact that at least one of those photos was followed immediately by giving a guy food and water. It's ironic b/c the gym, while surrounded by aggressive transients who really do things like assault clients and the like is actually one of the few local business in the area to make an affirmative effort to help people, including the homeless, by providing them with things like free food and water and, as I mentioned, free training that allowed some people to completely transform themselves and rebuild their lives. I find it gross that this work is being permanently thrashed for some reporter's agenda, but that's not atypical of the LA Weekly, which has truly become a horrible paper.
The "out of context" defense? I'm going to go ahead and condemn the photographs. If this were a non-profit homeless services organization rather than a gym, the photos would still be worthy of condemnation.
I'm not supporting the photos, which are taken by a bunch of fairly dumb 20 year olds. But (a) I am betting that you do not operate a business in an area completely surrounded by transients (b) I am betting that you, personally, have done far less than these guys to help the homeless in the past three years. I know that I have.
It's really a good lesson in how awful and distorted these fake media controversies are.
Your (a) and (b) have no bearing on the wrongness of the photos themselves, which unambiguously merit a stronger reaction than not supporting them or not condoning them. And whoever took them, the pictures include the owners of two CrossFit gyms, although perhaps your point is that the entire organization comprises dumb 20 year olds.
the gym trained 3 homeless guys, for free, and literally helped turn their lives around completely
Because if there's one thing the homeless need, it's raw athleticism.
I am betting that you, personally, have done far less than these guys to help the homeless in the past three years.
Dude. This is the kind of thing that brings the words "protest too much" to mind.
unambiguously merit a stronger reaction than not supporting them or not condoning them.
Like what? Using a .308 on them? As crappy things go in L.A. this one is almost Febrezey.
Most of the families relied heavily on convenience foods like frozen meals and par-baked bread, yet they saved an average of only 10 to 12 minutes per meal in doing so.
How can this be? I work really, really hard to keep my meals as short to prepare as possible, and it is definitely longer than prepackaged stuff.
Or perhaps the frozen lasagna takes 45 minutes, and so they're counting that as 45 minutes of prep time in the kitchen? Which seems ridiculous.
The pictures really are awful, and the guy who runs the gym should be ashamed. That said, the inclusion of this picture does make it look as though the writer had an ax to grind. I mean, a picture of some graffiti with a caption saying the gym owner caught a guy defacing his gym, threw something at him and then threw him out on the street being described as 'beating up a street artist'? The other pictures are shameful, but this one looks like just piling stuff on.
I just think it's tragic that some people -- not, by the way, public figures -- who have actually done a bunch of good things for homeless people (and for a lot of other people!) are having their lives screwed up by this. Yes, the pictures were stupid. Sometimes people do stupid things. No, I'm not going to be more condemnatory of people who I personally know have done a lot more than I have to help the homeless in the tough neighborhood in which they work. If you want to be self-righteous about it from 3000 miles away, you can.
It is indeed hard for us to reconcile the commission of evil with the commission of good. We like to think that evil is only perpetuated by those who are obvious, the better to relieve ourselves of the burdens of constant evaluation and reflection.
(Ta-Nehisi Coates)
314: If you want to be self-righteous about it from 3000 miles away, you can.
I can certainly tell from 3000 miles away that Teasdale does an excellent job of making himself and his associates sound like run-of-the-mill bullying assholes.
The Facebook posts bragging smugly about various assaults and threats that "may or may not of" happened (wink wink) are really the most damning, showing off a culture of nastiness that would seem also to explain the photos. One of them has a guy brandishing a shotgun (or an air rile, one hopes? that would be a little less insane) at somebody for the vile crime of arguing with gym patrons over weed smoke. Another describes a group of them essentially beating the shit out of a guy they found sleeping in the gym. And pace 313, while the attack on the "tagged" is according to Teasdale motivated by an actual attempt at vandalism, it's hard to see the response he describes as "may or may not of" happening as proportionate (though Teasdale himself finds it all kinds of amusing, obviously). It's not normal behaviour that he's describing, though he seems to think it is.
I'm not too impressed by the "you don't know, man, you weren't there!" defense on this one, either. LA did not invent homeless people, nor did it invent roided-up bullies. It's not like everybody else on the planet has no frame of reference here.
For context, this is a neighborhood very near City Hall, in which passed out transients and people with severe mental disabilities are regularly passed by every day by wealthy people on their way to work. Those people see the homeless every day but look the other way, ignore, and do nothing for them.
By contrast, here is a business that has welcomed homeless guys in without condemnation, given them food and shelter, given them free clothing, called for medical care for some of them, and provided free services and a sense of community and completely rebuilt lives for a few of them will now be condemned by people around the country in a media firestorm, just because some reporter at the LA Weekly found some dumb pictures on a Facebook page and had an anti-jock agenda (the pictures wouldn't otherwise be remotely newsworthy). I think that's legitimately a kind of tragedy.
317: By contrast, here is a business that has welcomed homeless guys in without condemnation, given them food and shelter, given them free clothing, called for medical care for some of them, and provided free services and a sense of community and completely rebuilt lives for a few of them will now be condemned by people around the country in a media firestorm,
Because they also bragged about beating up and abusing other homeless people.
316 -- you do not know what you are talking about. While I don't want to go into detail, the fight incidents that happened were the result of homeless guys breaking in and aggressively assaulting people -- in one case groping a female client -- and then being thrown out, no more and no less. Another time a guy slept in the gym and then pulled a knife on people when they came in during the morning. Yes, it is written up stupidly. No, you do not know what happened, so please stop acting as if you do.
Before this thread, I didn't actually believe the people who said Crossfit was like a religious cult.
While I don't want to go into detail, the fight incidents that happened were the result of homeless guys breaking in and aggressively assaulting people
I'm just going by what Teasdale describes in his posts. And that's not what he describes.
what horrible pictures, horrible twenty years olds (i'd perhaps hang myself if i raised such a kid, a good thing that would never happen) how it can be any excuse, stupidness of twenty years old people! whatever charity they did or did not, so their karma is taking care of them, good, so it should be like that, whatever you did you'll get your own rewards matching to the deed
I'm not saying they're evil people. I'm saying the pictures are indeed awful, full stop, not merely "dumb". That seems to me to be an obvious reaction, rather than a self-righteous one, but one you oddly don't seem to share.
Also, as it turns out I've been giving generously to the Coalition for the Homeless for the last decade, and they still haven't sent me my license to make fun of homeless people.
Sigh. I was actually there when the photo of the guy with the air rifle was taken. A fantastically guy from a neighboring bar came in, started threatening people and flailing his fists around wildly, and groped a girl's butt. It was frightening. The air rifle was pulled and the guy left.
As to the other incident mentioned in the article, I wasn't there when it happened, but here is what I have heard: a guy who was sleeping in the gym trashed the place. When people got there in the morning (I'm told) had a knife and tried to attack people. He was restrained by the staff and then arrested by the cops. It was written up stupidly, on Facebook posts.
Also, as it turns out I've been giving generously to the Coalition for the Homeless for the last decade
Well good for you.
and had an anti-jock agenda (the pictures wouldn't otherwise be remotely newsworthy)
Oh, come on.
That s/b "fantastically drunk."
It's true what they say: once you abjure the joy of the Mission Burrito, you lose your moral anchor. One day, you're disparaging burritos and the next you're beating up the homeless.
Isn't it dehumanizing to homeless people to say we can't make fun of them? They're somehow not sufficiently fun, like the rest of us?
Since I'm now deep into this, the passed out guy on the front page of the article is a neighborhood regular, who is a drunk. He also regularly gets food and water from the gym. On the day the picture was taken (I'm told, I wasn't there), he had been mocking people in the gym by pretending to do the workout, and then had passed out in the middle of doing so. The picture was taken as a joke and shown to him, before the nearby shelter was called. He since has come around a bunch for free water, food, and the like. I don't think that picture is the nicest thing in the world but some context really does change things.
if you just could imagine yourself lying there how would you feel, very worthy of fun i guess, but empathy fail etc. i know i know
whatever caused the gym people frustration it's just basic human decency to not be posing in such horrible photos, reminds me the american soldiers' photos in the abu graib
that is your true dehumanizing
how "making fun" of people itself is valuable to one's personhood, that "valuable" logic leads to making bullies and persisting of that bully culture, i guess
Actually I should say I don't know if he was shown the photo before the shelter was called. Probably not. I know that the shelter (which is about a block away) was called, and that he did see the photo. He carried around a copy of it for a while.
That actually does seem to be a case where the context changes things. Huh.
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I know one should never ever read the comments to online newspaper articles, but I'll confess to getting a laugh out of one of the ones posted to this Guardian account of Virgin's health care subsidiary getting a contract for core NHS children's services in Devon, which apparently is a place in England: "In capitalist Britain, Virgin fucks you."
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I guess not seriously. But, I do (seriously) think that aside from homeless activists these are the people I know who do the most for the homeless. Much more so than, say, the neighboring restaurant that simply has a security service come by to throw them off the premises, without doing a thing for them. Or the folks that step over them on the way to City Hall or their new loft apartment (also with security guards that throw them off the premises). So that this has occurred is a bit of a tragedy, and it pisses me off personally.
I think 329 was meant as a joke, but in this case it might actually be true. If the people at this gym are interacting positively with these homeless people enough that they can safely joke around with them, comfortable that the homeless people will understand it to be good natured, then yeah, this is a pure hit piece, and they're not really doing anything wrong. (You wouldn't think anything was wrong about any of these photos being posted to facebook if they were pictures of friends rather than homeless people.) If the supposed "victim" here thought the picture was funny, and carried it around with him, I can't really see the harm.
god i really shouldn't be hanging around here, what really strange morals to have to advocate such pictures
if truly karma thing works they'll be homeless themselves in some time to know for sure whether then they would find funny making fun of them, that will be perhaps a very clear and convincing life experiment
Well, hopefully it really is all just a hit piece and these guys aren't what they come off as being.
I find people who are homeless really appreciate it when you take the time to do a nice charcoal sketch.
Also, "With its depiction of a sexy nurse pulling a wagon of emaciated children, this poster from CrossFit headquarters offended some critics." is a pretty pitiable line of attack. Especially since the picture is basically completely inoffensive, unless maybe drawings of sexy nurses are automatically offensive. Also: "Some critics"? Really?
I mean, the gym owner is a 20 something who does come across as a crazy macho person in his public presentation, sometimes. That part is real, although it's basically self-parody. He also does a lot of good for the homeless, and has helped out a lot of them. The presentation opened himself up to an attack article, the motivation for which is a little unclear (this is not a remotely well known or prominent gym; it's a tiny small business).
And I've now lost the ability to write a letter to the editor about this without outing myself. Fuck.
It seems like the way Kids Today act when their friends pass out at parties. Sure, we'll give him water and advil and put him to bed. But first we'll post the pictures to facebook.
But it also seems like way Kids Today acted at Abu Ghraib. Oh look, here's a human tragedy. Lets take our pictures next to it.
I guess the only thing I'm saying is that I don't know why Kids Today always have to take their picture next to everything, no matter how else they respond to it.
344: I don't get that either, to be honest.
263
I'm taken aback by the argument that $40k a year without work isn't a fortune. Surely you don't actually need to afford a house manager to consider yourself rich? (Is there any room between 'not really rich' and 'horribly rich' here?)
There is a difference between being independently wealthy and independently middle class or poor. If you are independently wealthy you can live well without working.
As for the $40k per year without working as others have pointed out this is an optimistic return on $1M. And don't forget taxes and no employment provided medical insurance (and if you never work you won't qualify for medicare).
272
I always sort of assume that rich people have access to higher returns than us plebs - ...
This is partially an illusion, looking backward rich people likely have above average investment returns because you aren't including formerly rich people who invested badly and lost enough money so that they are no longer rich but are including formerly not rich people who became rich because a longshot gamble paid off.
278
I do not, in fact, know much of anything about how rich people manage their money. ...
Generally badly. There are whole industries devoted to separating rich people from their money.
It can't have been all that wilderness if you came back.
Actually, the trail hadn't even been opened yet; on the last night we camped in luxurious campsite with running water and everything outside of the wilderness area, and who did we meet there but the trail crew, preparing to go up and clear the trail we had just left?
No one. No one but that trail crew.
There are whole industries devoted to separating rich people from their money.
Strangely, there are also whole industries devoted to separating poor people from their money.
Industries are devoted to separating people from money.
I think 329 was meant as a joke, but in this case it might actually be true.
It's often true. There's guys I can joke with in this fashion on the job. There's one old Navajo named Mark who loves to do drunken Kung Fu up and down the sidewalk while we wait for the intox van. Doubtless there's people passing by who think we're making this guy do tricks for our amusement but I swear to christ he enjoys it and it gives him something to do instead of just sitting there and saying belligerent stuff to pedestrians while we're waiting.
If what Halford says is accurate, then the lesson is, these guys aren't really assholes, they are just going out of their way to make themselves look like assholes on facebook. They (or whoever their FB page administrator is) are the ones writing the captions, not the reporter. If the article is a hit piece, it's mostly one against Crossfit the organization, which is being connected to this by gym owners who left or were dropped. It's possible that the reporter didn't ask any follow-up questions, or maybe he did and the gym owner decided that telling Halford's story would just seem preposterous ("No, we totally helped that guy out before and after taking demeaning photos of him and posting them to the internet").
You might also want to consider how it sounds to say, essentially "You don't have to live around those (homeless) people the way they do, you don't know what they're like. The Gym People may blow off steam by ridiculing them, but they really do a lot of great work to uplift them." I shouldn't have to make the banned analogy explicit here. And really, this is not a tragedy of any kind, it's an opportunity for these young ment to ask themselves if how they protray themselves is how they want to be perceived. Hopefully Teasdale is sincere about realizing the error of his ways in that regard.
And urple, did you not see the actual picture? A wagon train of caricatured sick, emaciated children being pulled along by a cartoonish nurse? As a poster for a benefit for a children's hospital? You don't ... see anything there?
I got some information about how the story was written. There was a two minute conversation saying generally that the guy was a reporter and wondered abou the pictures on the website. That's it. No follow up. No opportunity to explain. Then, the story, which is basically the reporter writing up his reaction to a selection of negative photos in the most aggressive possible way. All for people who are in no way independently newsworthy or used to dealing with this stuff.
If you want to judge from a distance, go ahead. I hope you are never caught in a similar situation. I know these people, and you don't. I don't know you, but I suspect you haven't done a third as much for the homeless as these guys, and I'll also bet you don't know a homeless guy to speak to. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not saying that justifies the photos or writing the captions that way. I am saying the totality of the circumstances makes the article an outrageous hit piece.
Apparently, the reporter is a first time freelancer who saw these pictured and decided to write them up in this way.
Apparently the guy
Ah, there were some stray lines. Anyhow, it's not really your fault for judging based on no knowledge -- that's how these things work. But, as they say, a lie -- or, more accurately here, a fairly gross distortion of the whole truth -- goes around the world before truth gets it's pants on.
I don't think you read what I wrote. So the reporter's a hack and the article misrepresents the gym or crossfit as a whole. That doesn't change the part I was pointing to, the assholish "Let's all laugh at these losers" stance they put out on a public page for all the internets to see.
I'm not judging the gym owner or employees' souls or trying to assess the value of their life's work, I'm judging what they did and how they chose to present themselves and others. I'm not sure what knowledge I could have that would change that. So you believe that they are essentially good people doing good things. When they do or say something shitty in public, shouldn't they still be called out for that?
Pongo has it right again. Also:
I don't know you, but I suspect you haven't done a third as much for the homeless as these guys, and I'll also bet you don't know a homeless guy to speak to. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you're even way the fuck wrong. Maybe even some of us have worked with and for the homeless before. And maybe you should stop trying to pull this shit. I get that you have a personal stake in Crossfit and all that, but don't be an asshole about it please.
Okay, it's wrong to answer "I'm Mister Homeless People" posturing with more "No, I'm Mister Homeless People" posturing. I'm sorry for going that route. The point is, it's not exactly uncommon for people to work with and volunteer for actual charities for the homeless. The whole "I'll bet you've never spoken to a homeless person" thing is not a good way to go.
I think most people wouldn't expect that dumb things they say to a semi-private audience which has some context to be called out in a gratuitous hit piece in a newspaper and then mocked by people on the other side of the country they've never met. God forbid someone writes a news story where they pull entirely out of context quotes from people on Unfogged.
360 is fair. What has rubbed me the wrong way is that most people (apparently not you guys, but, in fairness, me) do zero for the homeless. Here are people who, in a somewhat meatheaded, but totally private and non-showy way, go out of the way to actually be in community with the same homeless people who most folks ignore. Now, because some hack writes a bad article taking some dumb shit way out of context, they are poster children for heartless jock assholes.
Actually, it's a good idea to be selective about what you post under your own name on Facebook. I believe this is the point Pongo is getting at. I'm sorry, dude, but posting on FB that you "might of" beat up a homeless dude is a stupid move full stop.
Having said that, I have seen and been subject to out-of-context media manipulation firsthand. I could be more sympathetic than I have been on that score and I do get that this is close to home. I don't need to rag anymore; basically I think this can be chalked up to another lesson in the need for caution with social media.
It's probably not the smartest move. Lots of people say dumb things under their own name on Facebook without something like this happening. That guy wasn't a homeless dude, or at least not a neighborhood regular. He was some guy who had drifted down for an Occupy protest, camped out in the gym and wrecked equipment without permission, and then threatened people with a knife. Yes the write up was dumb posturing. But most people's dumb posturing isn't newsworthy.
I've never actually been to a gym that had a completely open-door policy of the kind Halford's gym seems to have. Normally there's, you know, a turnstile, and/or someone checking membership or taking your money.
If I had a continual problem with violent drunks wandering into my gym and assaulting customers, I'd probably consider having some sort of door policy.
Just a thought.
Teasdale seems to enjoy acting as his own security guard.
Reading around in various places, I see that various people who claim to be a member of the gym say that this is their way of making light of the situation they find themselves in -- drunks and vagrants wandering in and barfing or pissing on the floor, touching shit that isn't theirs, etc. Obviously, posting pictures of passed out vagrants with tshirts thrown on top of them labeled "free gift" isn't a surprising or unheard of response in the realm of human behavior, but it's not noble, or good, or ok, and other good actions that may have been performed by the same people don't make it so.
(Also, man, Teasdale seems to be really hated by members of other SoCal Crossfits. [Accusations of cheating at competitions and assaulting female judges?] Is this all some big inter-fraternity pissing match?)
369.last: To be clear, I have no reason to believe any of that (people were linking a video that I don't care to watch and I wouldn't know enough probably to make me believe anything one way or another anyway). Just that it seems to have taken on the air of a Yankees-Red Sox (or should I say Celtics-Lakers?) grudge match.
367: I was wondering about that, and speculating that there's something about the gym that makes it difficult to secure when people aren't there. Possibly a significant part of the workout area is outdoors?
371: Presumably the flaming-mastodon pullup bars. I can't imagine the fire chief permitting that sort of thing indoors.
I see that various people who claim to be a member of the gym say that this is their way of making light of the situation they find themselves in -- drunks and vagrants wandering in and barfing or pissing on the floor, touching shit that isn't theirs, etc.
This too. Picking apart the story, the couple of pictures of passed-out homeless people are unambiguously awful.
The rest of the pictures complained about seem to be sort of macho-asshole posturing in response to aggression from not-obviously-homeless-or-otherwise-in-important-distress drunks and vandals, and while that's meatheaded and not something I actively approve of, it doesn't strike me as a big deal. (If all the nudge-nudge-wink-wink about beating people up is true, and people are being violent other than in immediate self-defense, that would be a serious problem, but I don't see any reason to take meathead captions on Facebook pictures literally, in the absence of anyone saying that gym members actually are beating people up.)
Having a guy in charge of security who wears a uniform and responds to trouble in a professional, non-escalating manner would be an improvement.
I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of macho posturing about beating people up has nothing behind it other than chest-puffing. Certainly that's my experience in my limited interactions with the kind of people who do that sort of thing.
375: Until war owls come into the picture. That's when shit gets real.
Area Gym Owner Comes Off as Serious Asshole on Facebook.
374: It's also a big expense. I'm pretty sympathetic to the proprietor of a business wanting to handle that sort of thing him/herself. I'm willing to bet that running a gym like this is a pretty marginal proposition and adding an employee (or three if you go for round the clock coverage) could easily sink it.
371: The Crossfire gyms and knockoffs I see here are big open garage-looking things. (Which is a great idea in Austin in the summer. After all, if you can't repeatedly lift extremely heavy things when it's 105 degrees out you're going to die on the veldt anyway.)
A Crossfire gym is one where you work out by dodging bullets. Highly motivating, bullets are.
Or one where you have to argue with Pat Buchanan.
I'm willing to bet that running a gym like this is a pretty marginal proposition and adding an employee (or three if you go for round the clock coverage) could easily sink it.
How do they prevent non-members just wandering in and using the gym, then? I'm not really seeing a business model here. Unless they have so few members that they know them all by sight.
As for round-the-clock coverage to stop people getting in at night... some sort of padlock, perhaps?
Everybody willing to do crossfit surrounded by homeless alcoholics is already a member.
That's probably why it's such a marginal operation. A fair number of people are probably going to Globo-Gym across the road and paying the extra $20 a month no-drunken-hobo-assault premium.
OT: Check out this Ted Rall cartoon, not for the politics but for the dialect. I was staring at it with my head cocked to one side for about thirty seconds before I figured out that to Ted Rall, "Larry" rhymes with "Jerry". It's the whole Mary/merry/marry thing again, but I find it endlessly surprising.
paying the extra $20 a month
Somebody hasn't priced out crossfit membership.
Apart from anything else, this is California! Aren't they afraid of being sued?
"So, Mr Teasdale, did you have any entry restrictions in place that would have stopped these men gaining access to the locker room and assaulting my client?"
"No."
"Had this sort of incident happened before?"
"Yes, lots of times."
(cash register noise)
382: Isn't their business model mostly all communal workouts, more like a class than like just using the equipment? That seems like it'd be reasonably easy to control for non-payers even without securing the premises.
386: TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH. Good grief. I pay approximately half of that (or would do if it wasn't free with work) and my gym has a full-size pool. And a turnstile. $225 a month gets you a sweaty room full of barbells and drunken hobos?
Sifu: I looked into it, and concluded that whatever else it might be, it was surely profitable.
389: Again, I believe the idea is that it gets you coaching, rather than just the use of equipment and facilities. The impression I have is that they're small and expensive because the model doesn't scale up all that well.
391: which doesn't exactly completely explain why it's generally significantly more expensive than martial arts classes, which are based on the same premise, but hey.
At this point I'm out of ideas. Maybe Halford knows.
I mean, to be all capitalist about it, the price is set by what the market will bear: there are apparently enough people who think it's worth it to pay the fees. I've got no idea about what it costs to run a gym, or how that differs from model to model, so no sense of the profit-margins.
They're franchises. They have to kick back wads of cash to the mothership.
Replace periods with question marks.
$225 a month gets you a sweaty room full of barbells and drunken hobos?
For the record, Crossfit here is something like $75/month. About half that if you commit for a year.
OTOH, the city-operated fitness center down the street is $40/year. That's right, I said per year. And it has a nice 25m pool, indoor racquetball courts, and lots of team sports for kids.
OTOH, the average per capita income is 13K/year. So the $40 might be proportionately expensive.
I have been toying with the idea of trying it out myself (shut up. I'm a sheep. Enough commenters try anything and I'll do it) and the convenient one here charges either $125 a month or $20 a workout on a drop-in basis.
397: Well, yeah, Third World ..du-uh.
It seems the one in the Cleve is $100/mo for three visits a week.
400: Of course, the kid games are kick-the-can and pin the tail on that dog over there, and they play on a dung floor.
(The gym on the roof of my building in NY was about $55/mo and it had a pool and classes and is small-ish, but a pretty much guaranteed clientele.)
I am currently doing the 'paying for a gym I don't go to' thing. I haven't been biking this summer -- work's just been too much -- so I haven't been using it for the post-commute shower and change, and I also just haven't been going. On the other hand, cancelling it seems like a big step, considering what a hassle it is to sign up again. I am an incredible chump.
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First the Pickle and now the Shard.
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406: This seems like a bad development.
Again, I believe the idea is that it gets you coaching, rather than just the use of equipment and facilities.
This, and the communal workout thing with planned workouts are big deals people are worth paying for. A lot of people are a lot less likely to work out alone and when they are there don't have a plan much less any idea how to execute it. Often they just dick around on the weights at random or just run on a treadmill every time. The Crossfit model helps overcome what for most people are their primary barriers to consistent exercise that achieves noticeable results.
407: I was at the beach a few weeks ago and while the rest of us were building an elaborate sandcastle being devoured by an octopus, the 19-year-old was busy piling up sand in an undifferentiated mound. Then he lit the top on fire (lighter fluid and leftover campfire wood were involved) and: Mordor! It was pretty cool, actually.
405: Surely many/most gyms count on a healthy percentage of non-attenders (I'd love to see the stats). For a few years I was on the board of the swim club we belonged to and one time did a calculation of dues/visits--it came out to a shocking number that almost no one believed or internalized (place was just just a few hundred bucks a year). And towards the end of our membership when our kids were older we had a few years which helped prop up that average.
Oh, I know it's standard, I just hate being the chump myself.
406,7: London has decided to become Dubai on the installment plan?
Qatar, actually. They're certainly buying up a lot of the city.
The expensive fees are basically because you get near-individualized coaching, by a small and dedicated staff. It's much more similar to hiring a personal trainer (which, at 4 times/week, will cost you much more than a crossfit membership) than a traditional gym membership. If you're not getting that, as you do at some crossfit gyms, it's not worth the cost, but it's not really comparable to a traditional gym membership.
The national crossfit body is a licensing body; it has a pretty sweet deal since it just picks up licensing fees and doesn't do much, other than administer a self-insurance plan for the affiliates.
The reason for lack of security is that this is a tiny business, in what is basically an abandoned warehouse/former crack house next to skid row. There's a big garage door in the front. There's not even space to put a turnstile or sign in desk. Nor is there remotely enough staff or membership to justify it. The incredibly small size of the operation here is what makes the newsworthiness of this, and the reasons for the article, totally bizarre. That's what gets me -- I don't think the photos were good, but they were intended for a tiny audience (including some of the homeless guys!) that knew that the people involved weren't monsters and were trying to make light of a situation. People do things like this all the time and it doesn't usually generate a hostile, and quite unfair, news story.
[Looking at Qatar skyline] Damn that is grarish. Yeah, the fabrege egg building does look more like that, but the shard remind me more of the burj khalifa. I gues if want to build some giant monster building, ther start to all look like Barad-dur.
At the globogyms I've heard people who work their suggest that about 70% of the people don't show up at all or show up very rarely. That's where their profit is, aside from selling classes that do nothing and supplements and other branded items, and why they can offer $20/month memberships.
Is this all some big inter-fraternity pissing match?
Yes.
I haven't priced out martial arts classes in a while, but I think the difference with crossfit training is that people go more -- 4-5 times per week for hour sessions, plus staying in the gym longer. I'd be surprised if doing martial arts lessons at that kind of frequency didn't price out similarly; I think the norm is $20/class, which would be $320/month if you went four days a week?
410, 411: And gyms are probably better than, say, timeshares. I do wonder what service industry is on average most "under-utilized"?
It's hard to fathom what could be less utilized than a business whose proposition is "Buy a longterm membership that allows you to suffer for your vanity, and you have to squeeze time in your busy schedule for this suffering."
4-5 times per week for hour sessions, plus staying in the gym longer
That really does make $200/mo sound reasonable, but I still find myself wondering where people get the time?
If I'm being good I go the gym three times a week (and work with a trainer one of those times) but lately it's a lot more likely that I go twice in a week than go three times, and I can't remember the last time I went four times in a week.
And, I say again, my life is relatively simple in terms of required time commitments -- reasonable work hours, reasonable commute, no kids, not overly social. I'm sure I could schedule it to go four times a week, but that would still feel like a lot.
I go to the gym three evenings a week. I love it, and I socialize there, but it does make me think of my free evening as precious. We'll have puppy class for six weeks and I am sure that by the end of it, I'll be very ready for a free evening at home.
I do find the time, but in large part that's because working out is what I do. If I were trying to do something else (like music), it'd be considerably harder to fit both in.
418: It depends on the subscriber, but I would expect Netflix to do pretty well on "make an aspirational list of films you think you should see but so far have never been in the mood to in your life, then keep them in your house while paying the monthly subscription rate until that mood arises."
Hah. That's why we went streaming only. The selection sucks, but we were basically never turning over the DVDs.
421: Been there, done that. I'm trying to remember which one we had forever, some downer of a classic.
416: My aikido classes are all-you-can-suffer-ow-you're-hurting-my-arm-the-mats-do-nothing-to-relieve-gravity's-cruel-touch for $150/month.
I'm still holding on to a copy of "Miami Rhapsody" for some reason from about four cancelled Netflix suggestions ago.
I haven't had time to watch it because I've been too busy beating up and humiliating homeless people.
421: Yeah, when I first made a Netflix queue it was all Bhutanese tragedies about child rape set to atonal music and undifferentiated shrieks. Before I went streaming only it was like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
Bhutanese tragedies about child rape set to atonal music and undifferentiated shrieks.
This is awesome.
I went several months without ever being in the mood to watch Hotel Rwanda.
418: It depends on the subscriber, but I would expect Netflix to do pretty well on "make an aspirational list of films you think you should see but so far have never been in the mood to in your life, then keep them in your house while paying the monthly subscription rate until that mood arises."
This can backfire, though. I thought "Little Murders" was going to be a sort of farce with rapid-fire dialogue and memorable quips, and it turned out to be an interminable mishmash of dated satire and sullen mopery.
Does anyone here still get the actual discs from Netflix? The worst was when you'd be binge-watching a show, and then the new disc would arrive so you'd clear your evening, and then BOOM! one fucking episode on the disc, because it was the last episode of the season. And then you'd have to, like, go read a book or something.
I get the discs. The one currently sitting on the table is "Videodrome". Not usually one that I would wait to watch, but having just seen "Possession" on TCM one needs a bit of a break.
I've had a copy of Tsotsi from Netflix for almost 2 years now.
It only occurred to me last week that I could just send it back to them and get a new movie from my DVD queue.
Tsotsi is a really easy movie to watch. So is Hotel Rwanda. We aren't talking about "Werckmeister Harmonies" here, for god's sake. Just watch it!
Not only does one not need to tube-feed the geese, but ducks in the wild sometimes get foie gras: because we have POISONED THEM WITH RICE --
Rice is extremely high in energy; it's the pintail equivalent of eating junk food. Rice is so full of nutrients that the birds, like many omnivores (humans included) engage their "thrifty gene."
query: duck livers in the actual wild-rice regions, pre-agriculture? Most natural luxury, or would that still be truffles?
Tsotsi wasn't really all that great, though.
Wild rice isn't rice -- I'm not sure if a duck could foie gras itself on it.
Wild rice isn't rice
Huh. I had no idea.
418: My SO had the disc for Milk for over a year. She finally popped it in last week to discover it was broken.
The incredibly small size of the operation here is what makes the newsworthiness of this, and the reasons for the article, totally bizarre.
Given it's (a) LA Weekly, which k-sky has described as a rightist rag, (b) possibly just its blog rather than the print version, and (c) divided into 9 "pages", I'd guess clickmongering.
As described extensively above, some of the captures simply cannot be rescued by context, but it does seem like the reporter was trying to put an even worse spin on it.
I should really offer you a fruit basket, but I can never find the link to it when I look. It's not a nice fruit basket anyway.
Wild rice isn't rice, but there was presumably some sort of wild progenitor of domesticated rice. I have no idea if it would have been accessible to ducks.
Zizania isn't Oryzia, no, but there is wild Oryzia, and wild Zizania is plenty nutritious.
(Can't figure out if there are commercial strains of Zizania, but some of it is cultivated specifically for a smut fungus that prevents the rice from reproducing -- how ornate.)
Smut fungus. Smut fungus. Smut. Fungus. Smut. Fun. Gus.
Tasty, spongy, swollen, white smut fungus. There are more things in heaven and earth.
The cool words thread is the other one.
432 - You should have a double feature of Videodrome and Dead Ringers. Invite a date!
And sugarcane smut has an appendage called the "smut whip." clew, you win the Internets. All of them. They are all belong to you.
Dead Ringers
Fifteen years after seeing this movie, I still get the shudders from reading the title.
So wait, does that mean it should not be used as a date movie? Because it sounds interesting.
Depends on your date, I'm sure.
Personally, I wanted to lock myself in a well-lit room with Pat the Bunny for a week or so, but maybe some women would instead be turned on.
I once watched "The Proposition" as a semi-date movie--we weren't exactly dating, but were friends with benefits, as the kids were saying then, and perhaps are still--which was an absolutely terrible idea. Fun movie, but if it puts you in the mood for sex, I'm afraid of you.
I remember listening to a French dude opine at length on how "beautiful" the "tools for working on mutant women" were.