I told my wife this story . . . it turns out she doesn’t know who Sugar Ray Leonard is either.
“I know Muhammad Ali and Joe Foreman,” she says.
Brush With Greatness
You’ll never guess who I saw at the Juice It Up in Aliso Viejo: Sugar Ray Leonard, the famous boxer! He was in line in front of me with a couple of his kids.
I wasn’t sure it was him at first, so I discreetly asked the college-age girl at the register, “Was that somebody famous?”
“Who?” she asked.
“The guy in front of me. That was Sugar Ray Leonard, right?”
The name meant nothing to her, but another gentleman in the shop assured me that it was really him.
Interesting fact: Leonard’s wife, who was waiting outside the shop, is not very attractive. You might think that the great Sugar Ray Leonard’s wife would be much hotter than, say, my wife, but such is not the case. Not even close.
Is it possible that Roberto Duran had just caught a glimpse of Mrs. Leonard ringside when he uttered his famous no más?
Worst Book Ever Written?
Apparently this is the worst book ever written . . .
I looked at the Amazon page for the book . . . out of 76 reviews, 70 give the book one star.
And they’re coming in so fast, you can actually refresh the page and watch the one-star reviews arrive in real time! Hang on a sec — ok, I just checked again . . . there are now nine more reviews posted — all one-star — so we’re up to 79 out of 85.
That’s even worse than the abysmal 9 percent approval rating currently enjoyed by the U.S. Congress.
Cheech and Chong Reunion
Cheech and Chong plan reunion tour
When you’ve only got one joke — and that one joke isn’t funny — maybe it’s best to stay retired.
Who’s their opening act? Foster Brooks?
Ashley Harkleroad Nude!
The Ashley Harkleroad Playboy photos, while tastefully done by modern standards, are more daring (think pubic hair) than the recent Amanda Beard Playboy photos, which were so tastefully done they were actually boring . . .
Milestones
Today is my son’s 15th birthday. He’s six feet tall, same as me. I actually have to look up at him a little bit . . . his eyes are higher than mine but I make up the difference with an improbably large forehead, so the tops of our heads are at the same height . . .
Randy Pausch, 1960-2008
Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.
If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the truth.’ If I got three more words, I’d add, ‘All the time.’
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Randy Pausch was lucky in that, thanks to the worldwide fame he achieved from his lecture and book, he died knowing that things he did and said would not be forgotten after he was gone.
Without the pancreatic cancer, he couldn’t have achieved that. Let’s face it, you can’t peddle the kind of pabulum cited above as “wisdom” in the absence of a terminal illness.
We own this book because my mom sent it to my son for his birthday. He hasn’t read it yet and probably won’t, but I read it.
I feel bad saying it, but it’s a tiresome collection of warmed-over platitudes. It’s like being cornered by your most annoying advice-giving relative at a family reunion.
Pausch was also lucky in being able to make an early departure from his famously self-absorbed wife, Jai (pronounced Jay), who didn’t want him to give the lecture in the first place because it would mean taking time away from her.
From a Wall Street Journal story last May:
A friend suggested to Jai that she keep a daily journal. She writes in there things that get on her nerves about Randy.
My wife would totally do that, but I bet there are some women would use the journal to record things they cherish about their terminally ill husbands.
“Randy didn’t put his plate in the dishwasher tonight,” she wrote one night. “He just left it there on the table and went to his computer.” She knew he was preoccupied, heading to the Internet to research medical treatments. Still, the dish bothered her. She wrote about it, felt better, and they didn’t need to argue over it.
Hey honey, just put the goddamn plate in the goddamn dishwasher, will ya? It’s part of living with other people. God knows what sort of minutiae this man would be having soul-crushing arguments about over the course of a normal lifespan.
I mean, I’m no saint, but I’ve put other people’s plates in dishwashers hundreds of times, and they were all in perfect health.
R.I.P., Randy Pausch.
I tell my son, “When you call grandma to thank her for the book, tell her you really liked the part about brick walls letting us prove how badly we want things.”
Father-Son Wisdom
I tell my son, “If people see you as being arrogant or kind of an a-hole, it’s going to be hard for you to accomplish things that you want to accomplish in life.”
“How did you accomplish anything?” the boy replies.
“It was hard.”
Why I Don’t Tell Jokes to My Wife
I say to my wife, “I saw a cartoon today . . . a husband and wife are standing in their living room looking at a huge painting on the wall, a portrait of an elderly man in an armchair, and the wife says to the husband, ‘I thought he was your grandfather.'”
My wife says, “Who was the guy?”
“The wife thought he was the husband’s grandfather and the husband thought he was the wife’s grandfather.”
“So why was his picture in the house?”
Never Wait in Buffet Lines Again
We went to Souplantation for dinner tonight. I was really hungry but when we got there, there was already a line of people at the salad bar.
I hate when that happens.
Let me tell you what I did: I grabbed a tray and came in swinging, cracked a few people in the cranium, then finished them off with a serrated-edge knife from the silverware station.
It’s a crude plan, but let me tell you why it works: the element of surprise. No one goes to Souplantation expecting to be knocked over the head and stabbed . . .
Mother-Son Advice
. . . and one thing you don’t want to be is annoying like Dad.
Eliminate Unnecessary Paperwork
If you need to explain something, try mocking it up and prototyping it rather than writing a longwinded document. An actual interface or prototype is on its way to becoming a real product. A piece of paper, on the other hand, is only on its way to the garbage can.
Depression 2.0
Mr. Obama is proposing to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends by a staggering two-thirds, moving the rate up 10 percentage points to 25%, which could curtail investment and business on Wall Street, a backbone of the city’s and state’s economy.
OK, let me get this straight . . . the stock market’s dropping, banks are failing from lack of liquidity, no one wants to invest in American companies, and Obama’s solution is to raise the capital gains tax?!
In the event of an Obama presidency, I will taking a long position in blankets, canned goods and shotgun shells . . .
HW’s Movie Reviews: The Dark Knight
It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit.
Haven’t seen it. Might see it . . . not sure yet. I’ve seen the trailer though and I’ll tell you something: Heath Ledger is TERRIBLE!
That’s not acting! Put the same makeup on somebody else, give ’em a script, let ’em read the same lines . . . there’s a million people who could do the same thing.
You don’t think so? You don’t think Heath Ledger knew that? Why do you think he’s dead of an overdose?
Me Too!
From PostSecret:
The Forgotten Man, Ted Kennedy and Warren Buffett
As Ted Kennedy has spent virtually all of his personal wealth on personal consumption of mansions, private jets, women, booze, etc., any help that he has provided to Americans has come at the expense of the “forgotten man” paying taxes. Ted’s own contributions to charity have been minimal (source).
Let’s compare to Warren Buffett. . . . Buffett has spent a negligible portion of his $60+ billion in personal wealth on personal consumption, giving almost all of it away to charity.
Perhaps Buffet is “the forgotten man.” He creates jobs by the thousands. He pays taxes by the $billions. He consumes very modestly considering his means. Yet Buffett is not considered a hero here in Massachusetts, at least.
“The Scenery Was Disappointing”
My Dog Calls a Press Conference
I just want to say to the American people: I am not a vicious dog, but I don’t put up with a lot of nonsense either.
— Lightning 
One More Thing on IndyMac
One thing I forgot to mention: When I was let go from IndyMac a year ago — and in each subsequent round of layoffs shrinking the workforce from 10,000 to 7,200 — it was called a “right-sizing.”
God, I hate that word.
I noticed they finally dispensed with the bullshit last week . . . when they cut another 3,800 people from the remaining 7,200, just before failing completely, the word “right-sizing” was not used . . .
Chuck Schumer Can Blow Me
Disclaimer: I used to work at IndyMac. It was poorly run and deserved to fail. They got way too much credit for their success when times were good.
Look — in a housing bubble, a monkey with a sign can sell mortgages.
Then when things started to turn ugly, they took the approach of trying to manage the stock price rather than managing the company. They started up a blog called The IMB Report, the purpose of which was to provide timely spin control on all the bad news about the company.
The title — The IMB Report — gives away the game. The IndyMac Report would be a much more obvious choice; IMB is the stock ticker symbol.
In shutting down the bank, the Office of Thrift Supervision said this:
The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York. The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.
“This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” OTS Director John Reich said. “Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process.”
Here’s Schumer’s response:
If OTS had done its job as regulator and not let IndyMac’s poor and loose lending practices continue, we wouldn’t be where we are today … Instead of pointing false fingers of blame, OTS should start doing its job to prevent future IndyMacs.
What a smug prick. Other than grandstanding, there was no reason to make those letters public.
Let’s say you’re concerned about the health of your elderly uncle, who has a weak heart.
Do you:
- Discuss your concern privately with his doctor?
- Sneak up behind him and yell “BOO!”