You know, I grew up with a group of kids quite unlike the guys they are today. Yes, I know, people change, but fuck that…. not sooo much that it’s cyclical puberty. I guess we could compare them to hippies. People that weren’t always free-wheeling drug tasting flower children, but innocent, fun-loving manhunt seeking yutes that relied on their older siblings’ behavior as the best example to follow. Then it was sex and LSD, now it’s Coked-Up croquet, Burt Bacharach and a pair of chinos.
Since high school, I’ve seen firsthand, a snobbish self-entitled change in the lot. Not my immediate cronies thank god, but the backup pack. Their obsession with the odd, is as fake as their childhood love for lima beans, downing them in one gulp not because mom’s cookin was good lookin…but ‘cause a home-run derby in the court was calling out loud “get your ass out here before its dark!” These guys were my jock friends that loved pop music, a case of beer with a football game and pool-hopping at midnight. As they went away to college, something very strange happened where they forgot who they were. Consistently subjected to rebellious individuals far cooler, it reminds me of when Bart Simpson goes to the school for the gifted. He’s mocked constantly for his stupidity and needs to leave to feel better about himself…….in this case, these guys scooted into pretty schools for their athletic talents and learned the ropes by conforming immediately to how geniuses do, or else perform a one-handed self-wedgie at the main lawn during lunch.
Back home, they were cooler-than-thou cult followers who could no longer relate. The guy who used to spike his hair like one of the Gotti boys now has a dry comb-over and dons a mustache that catches more milk than an udder bucket. I thought he’d forgot to remove his 80’s pornstar Halloween costume. They fight conspicuously hard to neglect these changes; morphing like butterflies in stages and taking off in erratic flight to mislead us, but always flying in whatever direction the season’s taking them. Now, the hardest whiskey ever produced is the only thing they order, and somehow it’s the only thing they ever drank, as they try to defend themselves when we point out that they used to swear by their father’s passed down middle name that Old Milwaukee’s Best was the shizzy. This mild Alzheimerish slip is not even the scary part….they believe they’re these far out artists that understand counter-culture, what’s on the brink of discovery, and what truly is worth regarding as cool or funny. The absolute driest form of anything creative has become their purest example of expression. If an old man shit his pants and dragged ass like a dog tickling an itch, they’d take a picture of it and call it art. They’re so far advanced for their time, that if confronted, they would outright deny the thought that they’d ever even had a transformation. Like one morning they’d stepped out of bed, threw all their Abercrombie and Fitch cargo’s into a fire and raided American Apparel for the ugliest fucking neon deep-U belly shirt that’d reveal their newly accepted happy trail before it disappeared below their thrift shop light-green corduroys. I wish I was exaggerating. At least then we’d have our friends back, and also feel less like we’ve been left out.
When I blame myself for being behind on the times, I look at what my true to life, everyday brodies are doing versus the guys that sit back and study what others do to gauge what’s cool…it just so turns out, the guys who've been made to feel idiotic have actually always been ahead of the steeping curve. The artists, the innovative ones, they continually create and leave something behind; those are the people that reveal their talents for all to see, instead of leaning hard on a crutch made of comebacks and chin-grabbing afterthoughts. If these guys were the writers, I’d say “fuck yeah! ……keep interviewing amazing people and drafting dynamic shit.” If they were creating music, jotting down lyrics or coming up with a new hot beat their families could thrive on, I’d say “that’s my friend’s band! Don’t they sound sick?!” They offer not even a shred of talent….having lost it after their 4th year of NCAA eligibility. They have no responsibilities even still, and they pretend their life flows in a different direction, when we've all been living. There’s no faking anymore who’s shit truly wreaks. I say to these temporarily lost souls, hate to break it to you….just like a hippie still is today, you too, will be tomorrow’s wannabees.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
WATCHMEN – Sometimes You Just Like Raw
At midnight mass last night we celebrated a naked blue god. One without the cheesy manhood car wash rag, as if God ever cared what someone thought of his junk. Watchmen was a killer flick with bone-grinding stabs and obscenely large red puddles, yet never did it try and hide behind the artificial flavorings of its comic book-turned movie predecessors. The music is a tribute to the late sixties and early seventies, quite a contrast to the technology used to make the movie, except since the film takes place during exaggerated instances within the Nixon administration, all the songs would have come out around that time, and fuck it, it worked in an Oliver Stone type-a way. “Wow, there was so much sex in that movie?” said two girls exiting alongside me at 3am. I said, where is Chris Brown when you need him?
When I was growing up I collected comic books; never read them, just collected them. I would stop in at the local 7-Eleven and whatever one had the coolest cover I’d grab; a worthless way to become an addict, but for some reason I just never liked to read. I came into Watchmen knowing nothing about the comic’s history, characters, anything….and I walked out feeling like a dedicated fan. That’s the way this movie is, legitimately hardcore, and you wish it was longer than 2 hours and 40 minutes. Although the story-line is fast-forwarded to cover years of history and loses some plot in translation, there's so much raw edge that you respect every corner never cut. Watchmen distances itself from the pack because they’ve embraced the R-Rating; staying true to the gore and fantasy that is action comics. Mastering this hurdle and understanding that audiences have literally seen it all, is why the chance they took to be daring was so successful. It’s not all sappy-romance and happy-endings. Good guys have to die too.
When I was growing up I collected comic books; never read them, just collected them. I would stop in at the local 7-Eleven and whatever one had the coolest cover I’d grab; a worthless way to become an addict, but for some reason I just never liked to read. I came into Watchmen knowing nothing about the comic’s history, characters, anything….and I walked out feeling like a dedicated fan. That’s the way this movie is, legitimately hardcore, and you wish it was longer than 2 hours and 40 minutes. Although the story-line is fast-forwarded to cover years of history and loses some plot in translation, there's so much raw edge that you respect every corner never cut. Watchmen distances itself from the pack because they’ve embraced the R-Rating; staying true to the gore and fantasy that is action comics. Mastering this hurdle and understanding that audiences have literally seen it all, is why the chance they took to be daring was so successful. It’s not all sappy-romance and happy-endings. Good guys have to die too.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
They Called Him "Chuckles"
It was the fall. Besides the scent of fake leather and the foam we'd pull from the seat cushions, we could smell the fresh cut grass through the tiny cracks of our bus windows. As always, those plastic guards on the track stopped the window just short enough to keep the stench of unwashed uniforms. Trekking down the steps, we jumped to the concrete where our cleats left mounds of hardened mud on Holy Trinity's parking lot. They looked like tiny brown islands on a sea of pavement; each pummeled by a bad meteor shower. Going through our heads as we approached the field was our usual difficulty of beating these guys. They weren't talented, they offered no specific player to keep an eye on, nor any sign of a strategy they'd use to dominate a game.....overall, they were just dirty motherfuckers.
I played soccer throughout my entire childhood; from the day I was four until my senior year in college. To this day, I have never experienced a raping like that in October 2003; I was a Junior in High School. When you think of the word "rape", you might assume we got our asses handed to us, or sucked so badly that we lost by some ridonkulous score. I really wouldn't waste your time with a shitty story about getting our asses beat.
We all know that soccer, on top of its physical requirements, includes a thick layer of acting. There's diving, throwing up your hands to create the illusion of being held, purposely tripping yourself when tangled with an opponent, etc. The easiest and most unnoticeable, yet effective strategy, is the art of "shit-talking" (common in many sports). Holy Trinity was a team with talentless players and brutal attitudes. If they broke an opponent's leg, then that was better than a goal. My job as a striker was to create open space, find a way to receive the ball from the backfield and turn it towards the goal to score. Normally, the opposite team assigns a defender to a striker to never let them free. My lucky day, they'd assigned McCauley Culkin on growth hormones, only with longer hair covering his eyes. Now that I think of it, he didn't even have eyes. This guy was Home Alone on acid with a machete, pliers and a bottle of Old Grand Dad; I remember it like yesterday.
The minute I stood still he came up behind me and whispered some shit about fucking me in the ass.
douche whisperer: "Hey buddy, what's up...I'm marking you today and I'm gonna be all up on your shit."
As usual, I'd try and keep on the move and ignore him until he feels stupid hearing his own voice.
douche whisperer: "Aww what's wrong wittle guy, you can't speak...come over here...."
A bit worried he cared nothing about the game, and more about licking my shadow, I felt a handful of my ass in his.
"Ref!!! Keep an eye on this kid, he's grabbing my fucking ass for chrissake..."
the ref: "hey! watch your mouth!"
"Well........Everytime you turn your back, he's fondling me like one of his Barbies"
douche whisperer: "awww....you used to collect Barbies? how cute..."
douche teammate: "hey Chuckles, tell ur lil momma's boy, I had his motha over for dinner lass night"
"Wait a second.....Did your butt-buddy just call you Chuckles!?! What the fuck kinda name's that? Lemme guess...you have a flamingly high-pitched laugh and everytime a little boy walks by, you need to use the bathroom"
Chuckles: "I love little boys...you remind of one I played with lass night"
"Jesus, you're original.....you and your buddy with the mom-jokes"
Chuckles: "you wanna be my bitch? I'm gonna make you my..."
The ball's kicked and we're off again. Trying harder and harder to keep away from this scitzo-pediphile, he was literally flat-tiring my heels every step. As the Ref turned away, he one-upped himself and proved creative in the flagrant minds far beyond the walls of appropriate behavior. Good ol' Chuckles had scooped around and grabbed my dick (dead fucking serious).
"REF!!!!! He's fucking grabbing my dick, this is bullshit!!
the ref: (blowing his whistle) "Number 4! I told you to watch your mouth....consider this your last warning! (he holds up a Yellow card)
"This is ridiculous!!!! He's reachin around and touching my dick, I'm not lying!! You have to watch him!!"
the crowd: "Hey numba 4!! I'm kicking your fucking ass after the game...you better run like a little bitch to your bus."
(yelling in the general vicinity of the crowd with my hands raised and eyes focused on no one) "You like guys touching your dick??.............dumb question"
For some reason, none of this shook up the Ref. He didn't pay more attention and fucking Chuckles was relentless. Next, he whacked at my junk like when you rat-tail someone with a rolled up towel. My coach saw what was happening and yelled to the Ref, but still he must've just thought we were trying to deter his attention. Sprinting away, I faked to one side, turned, and threw an elbow hard into his chin. It felt amazing, but it only enraged his eyeless McCauley mask. He got even more physical. No, Im not talking penne-alla-vodka; he'd come up behind me and start lacing in short sharp knuckle punches to my back. Then he'd move side-to-side, making like he was about to run, and as his arms would go up in motion to propel away, he'd quickly smack the back of my head. I couldn't even concentrate on the game I was so lost. None of this made sense in soccer. He had pissed me off so badly that even if I got the ball I figured he'd stick his cleat up my ass, turn to the right and cheer "open sesame!" The ref would then blow the whistle and I'd get penalized for not wanting it there (no-pun on the penal). So I faked being tripped. As we were running, I made like he took out my legs and the fact that he was two inches from me, it looked damn real. The Ref finally gave him a yellow. Grabbing my sac, pinching my ass and practically checking my temperature were not worthy of a card, but me tripping myself, now that's what punished him....pathetic, but effective. In soccer, if you are the cause of another flagrant foul after you have a yellow card, it's quite common that you'll get a red card and be ejected from the game. Your team would then have to play a man down for the rest of the game, and the thought of this kept him at bay for the remaining minutes of the first half.
Around the middle of the second half I finally had the ball in a position where I could do something. I took it hard up the line and towards the corner flag. With about a foot of space before being out of bounds, I crossed the ball and bent it in towards the ten yard line (an imaginary line). One of my teammates, Nick Karastinos, trapped the ball and buried it in the back of the net. For some reason I always would fall after making a hard bending cross at top speed, and as I got off the ground elated with joy, Chuckles threw me back down. He knew it was his fault that the ball was even crossed...I had gotten away from him. As Nick and my teammates celebrated towards mid-field, no one even saw it happen. Now that we were winning, I really didn't give a shit. I wound up hard and bitch-smacked his rosy fucking cheeks with a stiff open palm, hoping it would sting forever. As I jogged away, I heard him closing in to where he kicked hard at my ankles, chopping my legs out from under me. As I fell to the ground, the crowd started screaming and my coach was going ballistic. Everyone had seen it except the Ref who was writing the number of Nick's jersey in his pad to note who scored.
I've always been one to have a bit of congestion. Asking for paper napkins at every meal, or having my adnoids and tonsils removed because I couldn't breathe right......there couldnt have been a better time to be stuffed up. It just felt natural to suck in deep. As I gripped the grass and pushed my body up, I breathed in hard and long to the point of a gag reflex. You couldn't even imagine the collection.....I'm talking a mixed blend of good-god-almighty nastyness. And as I turned around to see his dusty mop-top and shiny fucking grin, I launched a wad.......... a solid fucking mass right onto that asshole's face.
my coach: Sub!!!!!!!! Ref!! Substitute!!
Before Chuckles could even squeegee off the muck, I had ran off the field and a new guy was in. For all the mishaps the Ref never saw, that was the most important.
As a man there's only so many degrading things you can endure, and I think I put Chuckles down a notch that day. The physical stuff seems so temporary whereas a "loog" tends to linger. Although his teammates wanted to kill me because they saw it happen, Chuckles didn't get the Ref involved. He took it. I don't know why, or what it was, he just did. For all I know the kid was so fucked up that he liked it. And as I didn't shake hands with Holy Trinity that day, for fear of losing my ability to reproduce, I got back on the bus thankful it was over. I looked up at the crack that my little window was fully open, and I closed it.
I played soccer throughout my entire childhood; from the day I was four until my senior year in college. To this day, I have never experienced a raping like that in October 2003; I was a Junior in High School. When you think of the word "rape", you might assume we got our asses handed to us, or sucked so badly that we lost by some ridonkulous score. I really wouldn't waste your time with a shitty story about getting our asses beat.
We all know that soccer, on top of its physical requirements, includes a thick layer of acting. There's diving, throwing up your hands to create the illusion of being held, purposely tripping yourself when tangled with an opponent, etc. The easiest and most unnoticeable, yet effective strategy, is the art of "shit-talking" (common in many sports). Holy Trinity was a team with talentless players and brutal attitudes. If they broke an opponent's leg, then that was better than a goal. My job as a striker was to create open space, find a way to receive the ball from the backfield and turn it towards the goal to score. Normally, the opposite team assigns a defender to a striker to never let them free. My lucky day, they'd assigned McCauley Culkin on growth hormones, only with longer hair covering his eyes. Now that I think of it, he didn't even have eyes. This guy was Home Alone on acid with a machete, pliers and a bottle of Old Grand Dad; I remember it like yesterday.
The minute I stood still he came up behind me and whispered some shit about fucking me in the ass.
douche whisperer: "Hey buddy, what's up...I'm marking you today and I'm gonna be all up on your shit."
As usual, I'd try and keep on the move and ignore him until he feels stupid hearing his own voice.
douche whisperer: "Aww what's wrong wittle guy, you can't speak...come over here...."
A bit worried he cared nothing about the game, and more about licking my shadow, I felt a handful of my ass in his.
"Ref!!! Keep an eye on this kid, he's grabbing my fucking ass for chrissake..."
the ref: "hey! watch your mouth!"
"Well........Everytime you turn your back, he's fondling me like one of his Barbies"
douche whisperer: "awww....you used to collect Barbies? how cute..."
douche teammate: "hey Chuckles, tell ur lil momma's boy, I had his motha over for dinner lass night"
"Wait a second.....Did your butt-buddy just call you Chuckles!?! What the fuck kinda name's that? Lemme guess...you have a flamingly high-pitched laugh and everytime a little boy walks by, you need to use the bathroom"
Chuckles: "I love little boys...you remind of one I played with lass night"
"Jesus, you're original.....you and your buddy with the mom-jokes"
Chuckles: "you wanna be my bitch? I'm gonna make you my..."
The ball's kicked and we're off again. Trying harder and harder to keep away from this scitzo-pediphile, he was literally flat-tiring my heels every step. As the Ref turned away, he one-upped himself and proved creative in the flagrant minds far beyond the walls of appropriate behavior. Good ol' Chuckles had scooped around and grabbed my dick (dead fucking serious).
"REF!!!!! He's fucking grabbing my dick, this is bullshit!!
the ref: (blowing his whistle) "Number 4! I told you to watch your mouth....consider this your last warning! (he holds up a Yellow card)
"This is ridiculous!!!! He's reachin around and touching my dick, I'm not lying!! You have to watch him!!"
the crowd: "Hey numba 4!! I'm kicking your fucking ass after the game...you better run like a little bitch to your bus."
(yelling in the general vicinity of the crowd with my hands raised and eyes focused on no one) "You like guys touching your dick??.............dumb question"
For some reason, none of this shook up the Ref. He didn't pay more attention and fucking Chuckles was relentless. Next, he whacked at my junk like when you rat-tail someone with a rolled up towel. My coach saw what was happening and yelled to the Ref, but still he must've just thought we were trying to deter his attention. Sprinting away, I faked to one side, turned, and threw an elbow hard into his chin. It felt amazing, but it only enraged his eyeless McCauley mask. He got even more physical. No, Im not talking penne-alla-vodka; he'd come up behind me and start lacing in short sharp knuckle punches to my back. Then he'd move side-to-side, making like he was about to run, and as his arms would go up in motion to propel away, he'd quickly smack the back of my head. I couldn't even concentrate on the game I was so lost. None of this made sense in soccer. He had pissed me off so badly that even if I got the ball I figured he'd stick his cleat up my ass, turn to the right and cheer "open sesame!" The ref would then blow the whistle and I'd get penalized for not wanting it there (no-pun on the penal). So I faked being tripped. As we were running, I made like he took out my legs and the fact that he was two inches from me, it looked damn real. The Ref finally gave him a yellow. Grabbing my sac, pinching my ass and practically checking my temperature were not worthy of a card, but me tripping myself, now that's what punished him....pathetic, but effective. In soccer, if you are the cause of another flagrant foul after you have a yellow card, it's quite common that you'll get a red card and be ejected from the game. Your team would then have to play a man down for the rest of the game, and the thought of this kept him at bay for the remaining minutes of the first half.
Around the middle of the second half I finally had the ball in a position where I could do something. I took it hard up the line and towards the corner flag. With about a foot of space before being out of bounds, I crossed the ball and bent it in towards the ten yard line (an imaginary line). One of my teammates, Nick Karastinos, trapped the ball and buried it in the back of the net. For some reason I always would fall after making a hard bending cross at top speed, and as I got off the ground elated with joy, Chuckles threw me back down. He knew it was his fault that the ball was even crossed...I had gotten away from him. As Nick and my teammates celebrated towards mid-field, no one even saw it happen. Now that we were winning, I really didn't give a shit. I wound up hard and bitch-smacked his rosy fucking cheeks with a stiff open palm, hoping it would sting forever. As I jogged away, I heard him closing in to where he kicked hard at my ankles, chopping my legs out from under me. As I fell to the ground, the crowd started screaming and my coach was going ballistic. Everyone had seen it except the Ref who was writing the number of Nick's jersey in his pad to note who scored.
I've always been one to have a bit of congestion. Asking for paper napkins at every meal, or having my adnoids and tonsils removed because I couldn't breathe right......there couldnt have been a better time to be stuffed up. It just felt natural to suck in deep. As I gripped the grass and pushed my body up, I breathed in hard and long to the point of a gag reflex. You couldn't even imagine the collection.....I'm talking a mixed blend of good-god-almighty nastyness. And as I turned around to see his dusty mop-top and shiny fucking grin, I launched a wad.......... a solid fucking mass right onto that asshole's face.
my coach: Sub!!!!!!!! Ref!! Substitute!!
Before Chuckles could even squeegee off the muck, I had ran off the field and a new guy was in. For all the mishaps the Ref never saw, that was the most important.
As a man there's only so many degrading things you can endure, and I think I put Chuckles down a notch that day. The physical stuff seems so temporary whereas a "loog" tends to linger. Although his teammates wanted to kill me because they saw it happen, Chuckles didn't get the Ref involved. He took it. I don't know why, or what it was, he just did. For all I know the kid was so fucked up that he liked it. And as I didn't shake hands with Holy Trinity that day, for fear of losing my ability to reproduce, I got back on the bus thankful it was over. I looked up at the crack that my little window was fully open, and I closed it.
Friday, February 20, 2009
No One Knew What They Were Doing
At 22 years old I slithered into the world of cash management through the thick brush that concealed it; and five years later, inched out wounded and with little dignity. Just as worms expose themselves to concrete the minute your lawn gets soggy, we too tried our hardest to keep from drowning. We lost many friends to the flood, and many thereafter in the blazing heat.
I don't know if it's a good thing when people say 90% of your job you'll learn on-site. It leaves way too much to the imagination of those with sneaky imaginations. Lately you see in the news different headlines like "idiot financier schemes investors out of $50 Billion." This isn't some mistake they made; take it from me. It's their ability to lie with blatant overconfidence while being completely uneducated to begin with. Not to mention the stiffening orgasmic power that the money injected into to them day after day. Every crispy new million they'd raise added another inch to that big swingin dick they'd imagined they had. Just as I knew little about the products we bought our clients, everyone around me only knew a Hershey squirt more.
There's a difference between Analysts and Salesmen. An Analyst is someone who combs the fine print of a prospectus and tests every possible scenario to litmus. A Salesman however, is a fundamentalist. They take two snippets of detail out of context and drive home those key elements; ponying up their children as collateral to prove it. The point is, that's the job of a salesman. To know how to close business and make friends with any type of asshole that farts an unclean one, and uses spare hundos to clean it up. The job of the analyst is the flag-raising, compliance policy-driven blowhard which Executives need at their hip to say "yay" or "nay" about the products they're willing to back. The Executive, we all know is just a figurehead powdering his nose and swaying his conductor's wand amongst his executive peers. There's no physical way he could be aware of the investments his 14,000 employees are suggesting their clients should buy. If you're the CEO during an economic upturn, you end up being a genius...during a downturn, it's all your fault....simple as that.
I say no one knew what they were doing because they would've been fired way before fully learning how to properly do it. When you're thrown into a pit of snakes you have to quickly figure out how to survive. The chance to read up on what snake is the deadliest, their territorial behavior, and/or the history of curing bites, is a chance you're never afforded. There's no time for fucking around. You either produce or you're gone. The guy next to me was someone brand new quite often.
We were bond managers, corporate cash managers, traders, investment advisors, whatever you want to call us...and our job was to invest excess cash for corporations. What they wanted was high interest rates in a short amount of time without a lot of risk. When we looked at a product named "The City of Miami Dade Development Project", do you actually think we called up the city department and asked how their budget and fiscal policy forecast was looking for the next 20 years? Do you think we worried that Miami-Dade might be the next place a massive hurricane would hit, and that we shouldn't put our client into this type of Municipal Bond because "anything can happen?" Who do you think we would've gotten at the city office if we'd called? I'm picturing someone worse than the talent at the DMV. Hell, they'd provided us with a 202-page prospectus to read over with a magnifying glass, so we could always reference that if we had ay questions. Our boss would've been real proud of the revenue we brought in if we'd spent the next 5 days reading that over. After all, we sold 300 types of these bonds every single day from different cities, water, power, and aviation authorities. Special housing, roadwork, transportation, sanitation, and stadium projects were all common players for good rates of interest as well. All we could go on was the credit-rating and whether or not the name sounded legit. In order for a corporation to invest in a bond, it normally needs to be AAA-rated because it's the safest quality out there. Considering they were so safe, the blanket we wrapped them in bedded totally different securities, such as CD's, Treasuries and anything else "guaranteed", where they have never slept.
The people that were structuring these bonds were also oblivious. They would pool together several hundred million dollars worth of outstanding mortgage loans, credit card receivables, or student loans, and structure it so that they would meet the standards for achieving a AAA-rating from the credit agencies. If the bond being issued was 500 million dollars, a bank would create a fund name which would consist of all the loans together as one offer. You could then buy a piece of that issue in increments of 25,000. First though, they'd pile 510 Million instead of just 500 Million of those student loans into the fund, expecting that the likelihood of 10 Million dollars extra being added to the 500 million dollar deal, would be enough over-collateralization to justify all future defaulted student loans from those idiots that never felt like paying them off. The same went for mortgage related funds completely backed by outstanding mortgages pooled together. The formula wasn't really made-up, it was given to them by the credit-rating agencies, where some schmuck actuary came up with the idea that only a small percentage on top of the fund-size was necessary to protect it from defaulting. And that it would still provide enough cushion for those investing in what were truly unstable packaged loans. I wish someone would've just told the actuary that everything in life isn't a formula, and that they're forgetting one major fucking insight (a.k.a. "oversight")...... the idea of "demand". What if someone doesn't want it? It seems the question was never contemplated. Sort of like...."oh well, we'll worry about that bridge when we come to it." The idea that these products would become obsolete, that they would become the burden of the banks underwriting them, in sizes up to hundreds of billions worth of shitty un-saleable assets where the banks themselves will have to sit on the debt and cover it with borrowed cash at an even higher rate than the municipality they struck the deal with, would ever have to pay them. "Snot possible; never happen."
When a bank is approached by a municipality wanting to issue debt(bonds) to the public, the bank pitches that city on why they should consider using their bank. The reason banks go so hard after winning the opportunity to issue the debt is because they charge astronomical fees to issue the debt. The problem though for the bank issuing the $500 million bond is that it becomes their burden to find buyers for the bond. The city no longer deals with anything. They just take the money they were loaned and spend those funds wherever they need it. If the bank doesn't find enough internal clients to buy the bonds, that's where we corporate cash managers come in. In order to entice us, we're given a selling concession, which is essentially a commission-style thank you from the bank for the temporary purchase. The reasons we wanted the bonds were because they paid great commissions, whereas the other products within our investment hemisphere were not paying squat. Obviously, a light bulb should be going off as to why these offer such great commissions; there must be some related risk. To understand the risk, you need to know the bonds.
They were 20-year maturities, meaning if you were to hold the bond for twenty years from the day you purchased it, you would get your principal back after those twenty years ended; all the while receiving your interest payments. In order to attract buyers, these bonds offered an "exit feature" where every 7, 28 or 35 days you could sell the bond back to the bank and receive your interest without penalty; so really, you never had to hold it for twenty years. The market had been around since the early-to-mid eighties, and there weren't really any significant instances where someone who wanted to sell back their bond wasn't able to. It was the bank's job to find those new buyers if someone wanted to sell it back, and if they couldn't find anyone to buy it, they would keep it on their books as "inventory" and work to re-sell it later. This "exit" or "liquidity" feature is what opened up the product to many corporations and wealthy individuals needing to keep their cash available weekly, or monthly, and since the interest rates were quite attractive, this was the product to buy.
In July 2007, banks were becoming strapped having to hold so much debt on their books since a lot of their clients were exiting the market and keeping their cash very liquid in overnight money market funds. Every night that went by where those bonds sat in-house at the bank, they would assume large carry-over or debit charges on their own accounts for having held securities that they couldn't cover with equal cash values, therefore the bank would have to virtually borrow money to cover them legally....and those charges outweighed the interest they'd receive from the municipality. Around the second week in July some managers in these underwriting banks had secret meetings to discuss their banks' disinterest in continuing the business. The best thing they could do was sell as much as possible from their inventory and never allow the bonds to be bought back again by their bank. They decided to come up with offers so attractive that it was tough for cash managers to not bite. Upwards of $40,000 commissions for buying a piece worth $1 Million were offered, where as the normal commission for a $1 Million piece was about $125. Unaware that the price for having bought the piece would be your client's illiquidity until the bond's final maturity date 20 years from then.
As this became front page news, every bank stopped buying back their bonds. Although that meant the end of credibility and the inability to ever sell anything they held on their books, cutting off their clients from selling would save them Billions in repurchased assets. Whoever held an issue was going to hold it until maturity, receive their interest and hope to god the loans or municipality underlying it didn't default and become bankrupt.
Our friends at these banks who we drank and ate fancy dinners with wouldn't take our calls. They weren't allowed too. If they'd said anything, they'd be fired. Anything they ever really said was, "I'm so sorry, we had no fucking idea." And I believe them. These were traders, moms and dads just selling bonds and managing their accounts like us....not the CFO's making decisions to stop taking on debt because the stock price had fallen the last two quarters. They knew 10 minutes before we did that morning that their business was done.
Our clients would call us up and ask for new news, and we had none. Nothing but threatening lawsuits, conference calls with CFO's and Treasurers calling us asshole morons that deserved to be hung by our suspenders. I know, that one really hurt. I tried to provide an analogy for all this, and here's the first I came up with. If you buy a brand new car from the salesman, and it turns out to be a lemon, do you run to the salesman and call him a fucking asshole because the manufacturers screwed up making it? There is only so much blame we could take for investing in AAA-rated securities alongside the agreement with our clients that this is what we were going to buy. The real idiots behind this whole shit-show is the credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch who were the Analysts per se, giving these securities the highest credit marks possible. Although we could've sat and read every little nook and cranny about every little bond, or had Alan Greenspan next to us at our desk before we ever made a decision, either way we still would have been fired for never bringing in revenue.
The worst part was our clients getting fired by their executives because they had listened to us. Because they went to that baseball game, or that Bruce Springsteen concert with us and enjoyed themselves, and therefore wanted to reward us. Once they had to tell their CEO's that their money was locked up for twenty years and that they didn't know why, they never stood a chance. Corporations who had just gone public, raising close to 100 million dollars gave us their cash to manage for a few weeks until they stopped celebrating their amazing ability to raise cash in a market like this. After those three weeks were up and they'd figured out that they wanted to build a new manufacturing facility and push advertising expenditures to build their brand image, we had to tell them their cash wasn't available. In fact, we couldn't even put a price on their cash if they wanted to sell it at a discount to any buyer. It was worthless. We had ended up buying products that had no value for resale.
The days became dreadful. The phone never rang. There was no reason to call prospects, old leads or friends in the industry. There was no reason to ever believe or trust you since you'd pitched bird shit to them for months and months prior. The other products within the industry paid nothing so there was no money to really be made unless you managed assets under a fee-basis and not by commission. As the telephone numbers of friends didn't work anymore, and my colleagues would be sent back home to their families to seek out a whole new life within something they'd never known, I too was asked to exit the tall murky grass and hit the pavement to grind out whatever distance I had yet to travel.
The scariest thing I learned was that you truly never know if you can trust someone. I say that not so you can shit your pants about any relationship you've ever made, but to enlighten you that there's always a risk you undertake in any partnership. Even if the guy has billions of dollars and a reputation that outshines Mother Theresa, it's truly whether or not working with that person, and the joy you get out of it, is completely worth the risk......because they seriously, after years and years of adding inches to their johnson, still....might have no fucking idea what they're doing.
I don't know if it's a good thing when people say 90% of your job you'll learn on-site. It leaves way too much to the imagination of those with sneaky imaginations. Lately you see in the news different headlines like "idiot financier schemes investors out of $50 Billion." This isn't some mistake they made; take it from me. It's their ability to lie with blatant overconfidence while being completely uneducated to begin with. Not to mention the stiffening orgasmic power that the money injected into to them day after day. Every crispy new million they'd raise added another inch to that big swingin dick they'd imagined they had. Just as I knew little about the products we bought our clients, everyone around me only knew a Hershey squirt more.
There's a difference between Analysts and Salesmen. An Analyst is someone who combs the fine print of a prospectus and tests every possible scenario to litmus. A Salesman however, is a fundamentalist. They take two snippets of detail out of context and drive home those key elements; ponying up their children as collateral to prove it. The point is, that's the job of a salesman. To know how to close business and make friends with any type of asshole that farts an unclean one, and uses spare hundos to clean it up. The job of the analyst is the flag-raising, compliance policy-driven blowhard which Executives need at their hip to say "yay" or "nay" about the products they're willing to back. The Executive, we all know is just a figurehead powdering his nose and swaying his conductor's wand amongst his executive peers. There's no physical way he could be aware of the investments his 14,000 employees are suggesting their clients should buy. If you're the CEO during an economic upturn, you end up being a genius...during a downturn, it's all your fault....simple as that.
I say no one knew what they were doing because they would've been fired way before fully learning how to properly do it. When you're thrown into a pit of snakes you have to quickly figure out how to survive. The chance to read up on what snake is the deadliest, their territorial behavior, and/or the history of curing bites, is a chance you're never afforded. There's no time for fucking around. You either produce or you're gone. The guy next to me was someone brand new quite often.
We were bond managers, corporate cash managers, traders, investment advisors, whatever you want to call us...and our job was to invest excess cash for corporations. What they wanted was high interest rates in a short amount of time without a lot of risk. When we looked at a product named "The City of Miami Dade Development Project", do you actually think we called up the city department and asked how their budget and fiscal policy forecast was looking for the next 20 years? Do you think we worried that Miami-Dade might be the next place a massive hurricane would hit, and that we shouldn't put our client into this type of Municipal Bond because "anything can happen?" Who do you think we would've gotten at the city office if we'd called? I'm picturing someone worse than the talent at the DMV. Hell, they'd provided us with a 202-page prospectus to read over with a magnifying glass, so we could always reference that if we had ay questions. Our boss would've been real proud of the revenue we brought in if we'd spent the next 5 days reading that over. After all, we sold 300 types of these bonds every single day from different cities, water, power, and aviation authorities. Special housing, roadwork, transportation, sanitation, and stadium projects were all common players for good rates of interest as well. All we could go on was the credit-rating and whether or not the name sounded legit. In order for a corporation to invest in a bond, it normally needs to be AAA-rated because it's the safest quality out there. Considering they were so safe, the blanket we wrapped them in bedded totally different securities, such as CD's, Treasuries and anything else "guaranteed", where they have never slept.
The people that were structuring these bonds were also oblivious. They would pool together several hundred million dollars worth of outstanding mortgage loans, credit card receivables, or student loans, and structure it so that they would meet the standards for achieving a AAA-rating from the credit agencies. If the bond being issued was 500 million dollars, a bank would create a fund name which would consist of all the loans together as one offer. You could then buy a piece of that issue in increments of 25,000. First though, they'd pile 510 Million instead of just 500 Million of those student loans into the fund, expecting that the likelihood of 10 Million dollars extra being added to the 500 million dollar deal, would be enough over-collateralization to justify all future defaulted student loans from those idiots that never felt like paying them off. The same went for mortgage related funds completely backed by outstanding mortgages pooled together. The formula wasn't really made-up, it was given to them by the credit-rating agencies, where some schmuck actuary came up with the idea that only a small percentage on top of the fund-size was necessary to protect it from defaulting. And that it would still provide enough cushion for those investing in what were truly unstable packaged loans. I wish someone would've just told the actuary that everything in life isn't a formula, and that they're forgetting one major fucking insight (a.k.a. "oversight")...... the idea of "demand". What if someone doesn't want it? It seems the question was never contemplated. Sort of like...."oh well, we'll worry about that bridge when we come to it." The idea that these products would become obsolete, that they would become the burden of the banks underwriting them, in sizes up to hundreds of billions worth of shitty un-saleable assets where the banks themselves will have to sit on the debt and cover it with borrowed cash at an even higher rate than the municipality they struck the deal with, would ever have to pay them. "Snot possible; never happen."
When a bank is approached by a municipality wanting to issue debt(bonds) to the public, the bank pitches that city on why they should consider using their bank. The reason banks go so hard after winning the opportunity to issue the debt is because they charge astronomical fees to issue the debt. The problem though for the bank issuing the $500 million bond is that it becomes their burden to find buyers for the bond. The city no longer deals with anything. They just take the money they were loaned and spend those funds wherever they need it. If the bank doesn't find enough internal clients to buy the bonds, that's where we corporate cash managers come in. In order to entice us, we're given a selling concession, which is essentially a commission-style thank you from the bank for the temporary purchase. The reasons we wanted the bonds were because they paid great commissions, whereas the other products within our investment hemisphere were not paying squat. Obviously, a light bulb should be going off as to why these offer such great commissions; there must be some related risk. To understand the risk, you need to know the bonds.
They were 20-year maturities, meaning if you were to hold the bond for twenty years from the day you purchased it, you would get your principal back after those twenty years ended; all the while receiving your interest payments. In order to attract buyers, these bonds offered an "exit feature" where every 7, 28 or 35 days you could sell the bond back to the bank and receive your interest without penalty; so really, you never had to hold it for twenty years. The market had been around since the early-to-mid eighties, and there weren't really any significant instances where someone who wanted to sell back their bond wasn't able to. It was the bank's job to find those new buyers if someone wanted to sell it back, and if they couldn't find anyone to buy it, they would keep it on their books as "inventory" and work to re-sell it later. This "exit" or "liquidity" feature is what opened up the product to many corporations and wealthy individuals needing to keep their cash available weekly, or monthly, and since the interest rates were quite attractive, this was the product to buy.
In July 2007, banks were becoming strapped having to hold so much debt on their books since a lot of their clients were exiting the market and keeping their cash very liquid in overnight money market funds. Every night that went by where those bonds sat in-house at the bank, they would assume large carry-over or debit charges on their own accounts for having held securities that they couldn't cover with equal cash values, therefore the bank would have to virtually borrow money to cover them legally....and those charges outweighed the interest they'd receive from the municipality. Around the second week in July some managers in these underwriting banks had secret meetings to discuss their banks' disinterest in continuing the business. The best thing they could do was sell as much as possible from their inventory and never allow the bonds to be bought back again by their bank. They decided to come up with offers so attractive that it was tough for cash managers to not bite. Upwards of $40,000 commissions for buying a piece worth $1 Million were offered, where as the normal commission for a $1 Million piece was about $125. Unaware that the price for having bought the piece would be your client's illiquidity until the bond's final maturity date 20 years from then.
As this became front page news, every bank stopped buying back their bonds. Although that meant the end of credibility and the inability to ever sell anything they held on their books, cutting off their clients from selling would save them Billions in repurchased assets. Whoever held an issue was going to hold it until maturity, receive their interest and hope to god the loans or municipality underlying it didn't default and become bankrupt.
Our friends at these banks who we drank and ate fancy dinners with wouldn't take our calls. They weren't allowed too. If they'd said anything, they'd be fired. Anything they ever really said was, "I'm so sorry, we had no fucking idea." And I believe them. These were traders, moms and dads just selling bonds and managing their accounts like us....not the CFO's making decisions to stop taking on debt because the stock price had fallen the last two quarters. They knew 10 minutes before we did that morning that their business was done.
Our clients would call us up and ask for new news, and we had none. Nothing but threatening lawsuits, conference calls with CFO's and Treasurers calling us asshole morons that deserved to be hung by our suspenders. I know, that one really hurt. I tried to provide an analogy for all this, and here's the first I came up with. If you buy a brand new car from the salesman, and it turns out to be a lemon, do you run to the salesman and call him a fucking asshole because the manufacturers screwed up making it? There is only so much blame we could take for investing in AAA-rated securities alongside the agreement with our clients that this is what we were going to buy. The real idiots behind this whole shit-show is the credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch who were the Analysts per se, giving these securities the highest credit marks possible. Although we could've sat and read every little nook and cranny about every little bond, or had Alan Greenspan next to us at our desk before we ever made a decision, either way we still would have been fired for never bringing in revenue.
The worst part was our clients getting fired by their executives because they had listened to us. Because they went to that baseball game, or that Bruce Springsteen concert with us and enjoyed themselves, and therefore wanted to reward us. Once they had to tell their CEO's that their money was locked up for twenty years and that they didn't know why, they never stood a chance. Corporations who had just gone public, raising close to 100 million dollars gave us their cash to manage for a few weeks until they stopped celebrating their amazing ability to raise cash in a market like this. After those three weeks were up and they'd figured out that they wanted to build a new manufacturing facility and push advertising expenditures to build their brand image, we had to tell them their cash wasn't available. In fact, we couldn't even put a price on their cash if they wanted to sell it at a discount to any buyer. It was worthless. We had ended up buying products that had no value for resale.
The days became dreadful. The phone never rang. There was no reason to call prospects, old leads or friends in the industry. There was no reason to ever believe or trust you since you'd pitched bird shit to them for months and months prior. The other products within the industry paid nothing so there was no money to really be made unless you managed assets under a fee-basis and not by commission. As the telephone numbers of friends didn't work anymore, and my colleagues would be sent back home to their families to seek out a whole new life within something they'd never known, I too was asked to exit the tall murky grass and hit the pavement to grind out whatever distance I had yet to travel.
The scariest thing I learned was that you truly never know if you can trust someone. I say that not so you can shit your pants about any relationship you've ever made, but to enlighten you that there's always a risk you undertake in any partnership. Even if the guy has billions of dollars and a reputation that outshines Mother Theresa, it's truly whether or not working with that person, and the joy you get out of it, is completely worth the risk......because they seriously, after years and years of adding inches to their johnson, still....might have no fucking idea what they're doing.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Rocking Chair - a.k.a. The Night of the Neanderthals
In the early summer of 1942, in rural Geneseo, New York, a father decided to make his daughter an icon for their family’s porch. He had been called to war and the person he’d miss the most was his little baby girl. She was only 6 years old; just brilliant enough to smile back at what he was about to say to her…..the last words they’d ever share. “My darling, I love you with all my heart…I always want you to remember that. Please…take special care of your mother for me. I’m going away for a while, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.” Peeling away the faded burgundy striped sheet from the white wooden gift he’d built for her, he asked her to promise one thing….”until my return, I want you to sit out front each evening while the sun goes down and think of me. This here rocking chair is yours so take good care of it. It’s our little way of communicating….when you sit in it, make believe it’s me cradling you to sleep on those cold lonely nights. I promise you, if you watch straight clear out over those hills there, one clear day you’ll see me coming home to my baby.”
She promised as if it was a secret she’d been meant to carry to her grave. Years passed by; nearly forty to be exact. And like most things built in those days by the crafted hands of our worthiest generation, the chair still held in sturdy worn condition. Geneseo had become a college town. One where those hills she knew every curve, pine and boulder, soon became lost in the dorm rooms and precarious steel stadiums erected on property she’d long had to sell. Although that was supposed to be her father’s most direct path back to her stoop, she knew any traveling he’d be doing was by bits and pieces as he’d said in dreams they’d share.
Nearly that same 40th year down on Long Island a kid was born who would attend Geneseo. A person completely unrelated to the old woman whom by the time of his attendance she’d be near 70 years old. She had no relation, and for all she had known, he would be just another of the thousand to have walked her sidewalk while she rocked in her chair admiring the chill the wind never forgot to offer. After three years in attendance his friends came to visit. Those were nights where they escaped the watchful eye of their parents being 6 hours too far away from home. Any more reason to get drunk would be far beyond obvious. The boy was mocked constantly and rendered “the old man” by his peers as he retired to his apartment far earlier than his cronies. These guys were not troublemakers. Not to be known for fights or anything other than fantastic senses of humor mixed with male testosterone. As the night grew later and less and less ladies could be found amongst the establishments they’d loitered, frustration set in. More like Neanderthals, they wandered the streets hoping the night would never end. Creating action in whatever motion presented itself; devious laughs and exclamations like ”who gives a shit” meant open invitations to prove ones masculinity since, well, anything meant go. As the old woman lay in bed ignoring normal screams of obnoxious antics, she’d still appreciated her tiny home and the brittle wooden boards that laid snug in the floor of her front deck. As his friends made their way up the driveway to the apartments known as Courtside, they’d seen something as tempting and fulfilling in their need for destruction that they couldn’t pass it up. There was no one left to impress except themselves, yet the laugh they’d expect was far worth its demise. Snatching up 70 years of love and history off the deck, the biggest of the three took it by both arched legs and swung it hard round several times with his body like an Olympic discus practice. Assuming nothing of its sentimental value, these men, and I call them men because there’s no better way to demoralize their action then to parallel its childishness to their age; they went ahead and mistook this legacy as something made in Ikea for less than twenty dollars. As he released the chair they all fell silent. Careening through the air it was like a body ejected from a car, flailing uncontrollably before gravity ended its artistic form. You could hear them breathing with dumbfounded stares as if they had no idea what would happen. Just like the bones of a human the chair shattered without even a battle. There wasn’t even an extra piece big enough to pick up and break over their knees. It deserved no more abuse, and offered no other possible opportunity for it.
Throughout the night the pieces stayed scattered on the apartment building driveway as students drove over them. No one had any idea of the cause, the effect, the reason…..they really didn’t care. The following morning the old woman walked outside and picked up the lifeless remains that were nearly as important as her father. It’d all been far more different than she’d ever imagined because that’s what life is. The unexpected changes that one person we might never meet or know, has on others. She dragged a puke green wheel-less garbage pail with a hole at the bottom along her grass that butted up to the driveway to the apartment building. It seemed like she wanted to make it harder on herself rather than walk the same paved line those boys must’ve treaded hours earlier. Branches popped out of the top of the lid as she’d done yard work throughout the week. She piled her favorite chair in with the branches; each piece of wood still as much alive as the day it hit the ground.
When she finished, she turned back, tugging, flexing, breathing….tugging, flexing, breathing. Every bump in her lawn she’d fight the garbage pail over, and each automatic thud sprinkled little pieces of painted chips and branches out the crack in the bottom like natural fertilizer. When she turned around to get a better grip with both hands, she saw the light white streak she’d left trailing behind her over the grass. The path towards home that he promised she’d see him make. It wasn’t until then that she started to cry. She’d never thought she’d have the chance to help him fight his way out; to bring him back home to the place he loved, and to keep him there forever even after she’s gone. It wasn’t until the night of the Neanderthals that she finally thanked her father for every single day she’d stared eager at those vacant hills, as he’d given her the opportunity to finally bury him in his own backyard.
She promised as if it was a secret she’d been meant to carry to her grave. Years passed by; nearly forty to be exact. And like most things built in those days by the crafted hands of our worthiest generation, the chair still held in sturdy worn condition. Geneseo had become a college town. One where those hills she knew every curve, pine and boulder, soon became lost in the dorm rooms and precarious steel stadiums erected on property she’d long had to sell. Although that was supposed to be her father’s most direct path back to her stoop, she knew any traveling he’d be doing was by bits and pieces as he’d said in dreams they’d share.
Nearly that same 40th year down on Long Island a kid was born who would attend Geneseo. A person completely unrelated to the old woman whom by the time of his attendance she’d be near 70 years old. She had no relation, and for all she had known, he would be just another of the thousand to have walked her sidewalk while she rocked in her chair admiring the chill the wind never forgot to offer. After three years in attendance his friends came to visit. Those were nights where they escaped the watchful eye of their parents being 6 hours too far away from home. Any more reason to get drunk would be far beyond obvious. The boy was mocked constantly and rendered “the old man” by his peers as he retired to his apartment far earlier than his cronies. These guys were not troublemakers. Not to be known for fights or anything other than fantastic senses of humor mixed with male testosterone. As the night grew later and less and less ladies could be found amongst the establishments they’d loitered, frustration set in. More like Neanderthals, they wandered the streets hoping the night would never end. Creating action in whatever motion presented itself; devious laughs and exclamations like ”who gives a shit” meant open invitations to prove ones masculinity since, well, anything meant go. As the old woman lay in bed ignoring normal screams of obnoxious antics, she’d still appreciated her tiny home and the brittle wooden boards that laid snug in the floor of her front deck. As his friends made their way up the driveway to the apartments known as Courtside, they’d seen something as tempting and fulfilling in their need for destruction that they couldn’t pass it up. There was no one left to impress except themselves, yet the laugh they’d expect was far worth its demise. Snatching up 70 years of love and history off the deck, the biggest of the three took it by both arched legs and swung it hard round several times with his body like an Olympic discus practice. Assuming nothing of its sentimental value, these men, and I call them men because there’s no better way to demoralize their action then to parallel its childishness to their age; they went ahead and mistook this legacy as something made in Ikea for less than twenty dollars. As he released the chair they all fell silent. Careening through the air it was like a body ejected from a car, flailing uncontrollably before gravity ended its artistic form. You could hear them breathing with dumbfounded stares as if they had no idea what would happen. Just like the bones of a human the chair shattered without even a battle. There wasn’t even an extra piece big enough to pick up and break over their knees. It deserved no more abuse, and offered no other possible opportunity for it.
Throughout the night the pieces stayed scattered on the apartment building driveway as students drove over them. No one had any idea of the cause, the effect, the reason…..they really didn’t care. The following morning the old woman walked outside and picked up the lifeless remains that were nearly as important as her father. It’d all been far more different than she’d ever imagined because that’s what life is. The unexpected changes that one person we might never meet or know, has on others. She dragged a puke green wheel-less garbage pail with a hole at the bottom along her grass that butted up to the driveway to the apartment building. It seemed like she wanted to make it harder on herself rather than walk the same paved line those boys must’ve treaded hours earlier. Branches popped out of the top of the lid as she’d done yard work throughout the week. She piled her favorite chair in with the branches; each piece of wood still as much alive as the day it hit the ground.
When she finished, she turned back, tugging, flexing, breathing….tugging, flexing, breathing. Every bump in her lawn she’d fight the garbage pail over, and each automatic thud sprinkled little pieces of painted chips and branches out the crack in the bottom like natural fertilizer. When she turned around to get a better grip with both hands, she saw the light white streak she’d left trailing behind her over the grass. The path towards home that he promised she’d see him make. It wasn’t until then that she started to cry. She’d never thought she’d have the chance to help him fight his way out; to bring him back home to the place he loved, and to keep him there forever even after she’s gone. It wasn’t until the night of the Neanderthals that she finally thanked her father for every single day she’d stared eager at those vacant hills, as he’d given her the opportunity to finally bury him in his own backyard.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Selfless Reflection and Credit to Lives Forgone for Our Own Sake
I’ve deeply settled into the thought of what our parents were before our lives. Before we harnessed them to couches and schedules they'd kinda chosen because sex was fun.
I’ve only known a man, never the boy. What he thought his life would be like. What he worried about, what embarrassed him the most about himself. To us he was always perfect because that’s what dad looked like….he looked like dad, but what did he think he looked like?
When he stared at a baseball card, did he wish for the majors? Did he want for anyone so bad his throat tasted it? Did he ever wonder who he’d marry…..and was she something of the storybook beauty, or a neighbor’s tom-boy crush? Did he know right away, or did it grow stronger with time? Hell, did it grow weaker with time? Running any race, what was he thinking about before the finish…who was he really doing it for? Holding his finger out for a ride to the beach, was there ever a worry it might be the end, or was the risk the excitement in living? In his life before this, what was his motivation? Was he lost and scared in the choices he’d make...... that they’d be right for everyone he loved, who he'd still never met... Had he chosen to work where he did, or was it a place he settled on because it was time to become a man? Canoeing the lake he’d done so many nights, no stroke ever the same, no moon shining the ink streaking glimpse he'd seen the year prior.....who he saw below the oar, I wonder if he loved them?
Brushing their hair and grasping the rings that dangled from the chain of those they’d agreed to go steady, our mothers were innocent dreamers. Staring in the mirror, they looked right through their eyes until forever. It was wherever they’d chosen to be swept. How fast it’d be and how their legs would dangle free over the threshold. The arms of the man they’d waited for would save them. No more changing younger siblings’ diapers, or sneaking later curfews under the nose of lenient veteran daddies. They knew they didn’t have to sneak, these were good girls and their parents trusted them…like a cigarette’s relief. But they wanted to be bad. They'd pull harder than any girl to fit their tight jeans. They died for a spark…. pushing lipstick harder and brighter because those nights, they lived for themselves. Something we’ve truly never seen. Their faces long since changed the first minute we cried. Oh what it must’ve been like to see them free. Fireflies at night, our mothers lit up rooms.....our mothers were the innocent unknown across the backyard that guys were too scared to try catching. The young women who learned lessons by experience rather than educational resource.....the breed stronger than the men they'd love. If you don’t believe me, ask him.
Do our parents catch themselves day-dreaming through the windows of their minivan, analyzing where they'd fallen short? Reminiscing of their chidhood and those comforting moments of confidence their parents breathed into their ears from bouncing knees. Do they hide those securities for their irrelevance to the present? For who they might hurt if revealed, and how they could never be taken back. Saving them for a long night's sleep where they choose when to open their eyes. I'd like to make as though they were just dumb kids in love, but these people were fearless. You're not supposed to know everything....and knowing that, they made the hardest decisions with their souls.
I can’t imagine something so unbelievable could ever make us become them. There's nothing that could touch them, not even the stars. How strong can they actually be, if at one point they were you and me….
I’ve only known a man, never the boy. What he thought his life would be like. What he worried about, what embarrassed him the most about himself. To us he was always perfect because that’s what dad looked like….he looked like dad, but what did he think he looked like?
When he stared at a baseball card, did he wish for the majors? Did he want for anyone so bad his throat tasted it? Did he ever wonder who he’d marry…..and was she something of the storybook beauty, or a neighbor’s tom-boy crush? Did he know right away, or did it grow stronger with time? Hell, did it grow weaker with time? Running any race, what was he thinking about before the finish…who was he really doing it for? Holding his finger out for a ride to the beach, was there ever a worry it might be the end, or was the risk the excitement in living? In his life before this, what was his motivation? Was he lost and scared in the choices he’d make...... that they’d be right for everyone he loved, who he'd still never met... Had he chosen to work where he did, or was it a place he settled on because it was time to become a man? Canoeing the lake he’d done so many nights, no stroke ever the same, no moon shining the ink streaking glimpse he'd seen the year prior.....who he saw below the oar, I wonder if he loved them?
Brushing their hair and grasping the rings that dangled from the chain of those they’d agreed to go steady, our mothers were innocent dreamers. Staring in the mirror, they looked right through their eyes until forever. It was wherever they’d chosen to be swept. How fast it’d be and how their legs would dangle free over the threshold. The arms of the man they’d waited for would save them. No more changing younger siblings’ diapers, or sneaking later curfews under the nose of lenient veteran daddies. They knew they didn’t have to sneak, these were good girls and their parents trusted them…like a cigarette’s relief. But they wanted to be bad. They'd pull harder than any girl to fit their tight jeans. They died for a spark…. pushing lipstick harder and brighter because those nights, they lived for themselves. Something we’ve truly never seen. Their faces long since changed the first minute we cried. Oh what it must’ve been like to see them free. Fireflies at night, our mothers lit up rooms.....our mothers were the innocent unknown across the backyard that guys were too scared to try catching. The young women who learned lessons by experience rather than educational resource.....the breed stronger than the men they'd love. If you don’t believe me, ask him.
Do our parents catch themselves day-dreaming through the windows of their minivan, analyzing where they'd fallen short? Reminiscing of their chidhood and those comforting moments of confidence their parents breathed into their ears from bouncing knees. Do they hide those securities for their irrelevance to the present? For who they might hurt if revealed, and how they could never be taken back. Saving them for a long night's sleep where they choose when to open their eyes. I'd like to make as though they were just dumb kids in love, but these people were fearless. You're not supposed to know everything....and knowing that, they made the hardest decisions with their souls.
I can’t imagine something so unbelievable could ever make us become them. There's nothing that could touch them, not even the stars. How strong can they actually be, if at one point they were you and me….
Saturday, January 24, 2009
I Refugee From Guantanamo Bay...Dance Around the Border Like I'm.....
It must've been tenth grade....I'm at this bitch's house for a big ass pawty, excuse me....I have to pull my shawts lowuh past my crack to get into character. For brief shits, this'll be delivered in the upper-to-middle class white ebonics we spoke in 96'. This pawty was awff the chawts, I mean, shit had a fuckin full-size puttin green in the back yawd, shaved to the smoothest little surface it looked like a crop circle bic'ed onto a nice freshman's bald beautiful..........anyway. Back to the pawty...so yea, we're inside pumpin the ghetto shit in Alison's Muttontown mansion. Haha das funny, da bitch's name was Alison....could be a fantastic broad now, but back then...well, like I said... So anyway, the hip-hop's bangin, the bass is shaking a few B-Cups hea and thea and we're all excited ya know, because we're white and wantin to be black but happy because we know we'll always be white. On comes the hottest new song by The Fugees called 'Ready or Not.' Our hands are up in the air and shit, singin da lyrics of a woman who said she'd rather die than have a white man's baby....but we're psyched cause she's Lauryn Hill, and who are we....fuckin white asshole losers who have it easee fo sheezee. Lauryn said it, so it's gotta be! Word... so we're sophomores in high school, we know nothin. All I gotta know is what door to take when grazing my girl's pasture.....ohhhhh, high-fives from all of my boys...uppp, quiet down, here comes that dog Wyclef's part, I lud dis shit. He starts cacklin his jive, makin us all irie and cravin some Red Stripe......no Problem Mahn! Mmmmm antishipatin dat line we lud to recite like da pledge a' leeeshuns........"I refugee from Guantanamo Bay...." finishin it awff wit da rest of my slices, all JNCO Jeaned and White Structure Sweatered-Out....we don't give a fuck!! Shout-out, Sowth SHaw Strong Isle baby!
Present time:
(Speaking more like Dave Chapelle's impersonation of Tiger Woods during the nationality draft....)
Like most kids do, they memorize the lyrics of songs and sing them because they're catchy. I remember singing a Dead Kennedy's song about Pol Pot and knowing less than an excreted nugget of what the man did, but I skateboarded down my suburban block with a sandwich in my hand and headphones tucked into my ears, singing like mass killings were common and you could catch one down at the local sump whenever you felt like it.
“Gitmo”, as the savvy news reporters like to call it, became a topic of conversation amongst bigwigs the day after Obama’s inauguration. Barack said the place would be shut down within a year as offered explanations for its existence are cloudy and equivalent to a Cliffs Notes book report. Now, hating my ignorance of such topics and the flitting disregard of those lyrics I sung like I'd sat next to Wyclef helping him write them...it was about time to research what was being said to soon close down.
Originally the place housed Haitian and Cuban refugees and acted as an asylum before sending them back to their governments as dissidents. Far worse than the Principal’s office, these were not welcoming home parties; your balls on a platter and whenever you got hungry your food was available. Why in my gracious lord’s name we keep this steel labyrinth off in the country we despise second most, I’ll never know. We can’t buy cigars from them, but we can house our world’s most random with confidence in the hands of a dictator we haven’t agreed with since the day he jumped out of the woods. Because it's illegal for us to visit the country, it's smartest to keep it there? Then why even have maximum security prisons here where psycho killers sleep in the same state I do. Send those assholes to Cuba if you think it's safer.
This modern day Alcatraz our government keeps healthy by paying Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s company) 1 Billion dollars to build state of the art facilities. Talk about dipping the pen in company ink; a literal and architectural hell on earth, this thing was like rigging the lottery on Cheney's behalf. After 41 reported unsuccessful suicide attempts by prisoners, the Pentagon re-named the term “self inflicted injurious behaviors”. Way to make up for it guys....did you hold an elementary school competition on who could come up with the best synonym for suicide, and the winner got a shiny new computer lab for their fellow students? Could you imagine if they’re actually reporting 41 attempts, how many there's truly been? Everyday at lunch time...."shit, it's noon, there goes Benny smashing his doggy bowl over his head until he's unconscious...I betcha 20 push-ups he wakes in less than 5."
The problem with this place is that no one wants to be there but no country wants them back. Most of the criminals there now are those involved in terrorist groups, and since that's the case, no country wants to admit they harbor terrorists. Some men await trial and others are just waiting......waiting for the day they can pick up the Kur'an again and read some religious nonsense that got them there in the first place. And by the way, they don't let them have any holy books while in prison and this causes animosity. Personally, I think it's a catch-22. If these guys get out, they hate you and our country for denying them their opportunity to educate themselves in their faith and therefore they blow themselves up to kill Americans because that somehow is holy. On the other hand, you can give them their holy books, they become obsessed fundamentalists and take snipits of dialogue from the text, misconstrue it into something totally absurd like, 'kill kill da white man"(howard stern in "Private Parts").....and they go ahead and draft up a plan to fly airplanes through our tallest buildings. It's a Bush family choice that Obama's working to make obsolete.
What it all comes down to really is whether or not the release of these prisoners is in the best interest of our country and whether or not they are given a trial for whatever it is they're being detained for. If it's prison because the guy is religious and suspected of enjoying terrorism, I still don't believe you could hold someone prisoner on a hunch. If the guy willfully committed a crime then like any other jailbird, keep em locked up. If he was trying to escape his country illegally then ask him which he would rather do, go back to his country and hope not to get killed or stay in the jail. But seriously, you've gotta let those people go that you have no evidence on...unless somehow you prove they're insane and need constant medical attention......in this case, every chicken is labeled in the pen as inflicting self-injurious behaviors...therefore, they're all a bit crazy...we just have to find which pharmaceutical company Cheney owns so he can profit while drugging them up.
.........i've always wanted to say this...."fo shizzle'......
Present time:
(Speaking more like Dave Chapelle's impersonation of Tiger Woods during the nationality draft....)
Like most kids do, they memorize the lyrics of songs and sing them because they're catchy. I remember singing a Dead Kennedy's song about Pol Pot and knowing less than an excreted nugget of what the man did, but I skateboarded down my suburban block with a sandwich in my hand and headphones tucked into my ears, singing like mass killings were common and you could catch one down at the local sump whenever you felt like it.
“Gitmo”, as the savvy news reporters like to call it, became a topic of conversation amongst bigwigs the day after Obama’s inauguration. Barack said the place would be shut down within a year as offered explanations for its existence are cloudy and equivalent to a Cliffs Notes book report. Now, hating my ignorance of such topics and the flitting disregard of those lyrics I sung like I'd sat next to Wyclef helping him write them...it was about time to research what was being said to soon close down.
Originally the place housed Haitian and Cuban refugees and acted as an asylum before sending them back to their governments as dissidents. Far worse than the Principal’s office, these were not welcoming home parties; your balls on a platter and whenever you got hungry your food was available. Why in my gracious lord’s name we keep this steel labyrinth off in the country we despise second most, I’ll never know. We can’t buy cigars from them, but we can house our world’s most random with confidence in the hands of a dictator we haven’t agreed with since the day he jumped out of the woods. Because it's illegal for us to visit the country, it's smartest to keep it there? Then why even have maximum security prisons here where psycho killers sleep in the same state I do. Send those assholes to Cuba if you think it's safer.
This modern day Alcatraz our government keeps healthy by paying Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s company) 1 Billion dollars to build state of the art facilities. Talk about dipping the pen in company ink; a literal and architectural hell on earth, this thing was like rigging the lottery on Cheney's behalf. After 41 reported unsuccessful suicide attempts by prisoners, the Pentagon re-named the term “self inflicted injurious behaviors”. Way to make up for it guys....did you hold an elementary school competition on who could come up with the best synonym for suicide, and the winner got a shiny new computer lab for their fellow students? Could you imagine if they’re actually reporting 41 attempts, how many there's truly been? Everyday at lunch time...."shit, it's noon, there goes Benny smashing his doggy bowl over his head until he's unconscious...I betcha 20 push-ups he wakes in less than 5."
The problem with this place is that no one wants to be there but no country wants them back. Most of the criminals there now are those involved in terrorist groups, and since that's the case, no country wants to admit they harbor terrorists. Some men await trial and others are just waiting......waiting for the day they can pick up the Kur'an again and read some religious nonsense that got them there in the first place. And by the way, they don't let them have any holy books while in prison and this causes animosity. Personally, I think it's a catch-22. If these guys get out, they hate you and our country for denying them their opportunity to educate themselves in their faith and therefore they blow themselves up to kill Americans because that somehow is holy. On the other hand, you can give them their holy books, they become obsessed fundamentalists and take snipits of dialogue from the text, misconstrue it into something totally absurd like, 'kill kill da white man"(howard stern in "Private Parts").....and they go ahead and draft up a plan to fly airplanes through our tallest buildings. It's a Bush family choice that Obama's working to make obsolete.
What it all comes down to really is whether or not the release of these prisoners is in the best interest of our country and whether or not they are given a trial for whatever it is they're being detained for. If it's prison because the guy is religious and suspected of enjoying terrorism, I still don't believe you could hold someone prisoner on a hunch. If the guy willfully committed a crime then like any other jailbird, keep em locked up. If he was trying to escape his country illegally then ask him which he would rather do, go back to his country and hope not to get killed or stay in the jail. But seriously, you've gotta let those people go that you have no evidence on...unless somehow you prove they're insane and need constant medical attention......in this case, every chicken is labeled in the pen as inflicting self-injurious behaviors...therefore, they're all a bit crazy...we just have to find which pharmaceutical company Cheney owns so he can profit while drugging them up.
.........i've always wanted to say this...."fo shizzle'......
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