Faith-Based Finance

My law school tuition, at a public university, was around $1,000 per year. Now it’s around $40K.

On another note: Donald Sterling, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

@Dodgerblue: I’m still wrapping my head around this:

The NAACP will not go forward with plans to give a lifetime achievement award to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, NAACP Interim President Lorraine Miller said Sunday.

I’m new to the subject, but as locals report and Deadspin collates, Sterling’s lifetime bigotry is a matter of historical record. I’m wondering how an NAACP award could have even been considered. Unless there was a major donation attached.

and money can buy _______________.

@nojo:
I’d lean heavily on donation.

Tragically hilarious in hindsight.

I guess the Book of MBA = Book of Revelations

@ManchuCandidate: Does the NAACP sell Indulgences?

@nojo: Yes.

@Dodgerblue: You should thank me, earlier this week I helped convince one of our paralegals to pass up a full scholarship to an east coast law school to instead go to your alma mater (offering her very little $$) because the public interest program is so good there.

@SanFranLefty: Thanks — it is a good program. Tell her to watch our website this Fall for legal internships for Summer of 2015.

@nojo: Everybody who follows pro basketball knows about this jerk. He is also well-known in the LA area as a racist landlord.

@Dodgerblue: He’s as ugly as his soul, isn’t he?

Isn’t it funny how when kind, funny people enter old age they become a kind of picture of beatification – wizened little saints. And their opposite number, what gnarled, tree-root looking things they become!

I’m aiming for saint. I’ll let you know when it gets here.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel:

Step 1: Be a Pope.

Step 2: Relax the qualifications for future Popes.

Step 3: Prophet!!!

@nojo: Oooh, clever. Really, no snark, I envy that one.

@Dodgerblue: Nothing like a sponsor boycott to motivate a professional sport league.

Bob Hoskins died!

@Benedick: I just looked at his imdb listings. A full career. Including this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIXAT6fGUw4

@Benedick: What a shame. Good actor.

@Dodgerblue: I did two shows with him: a musical in the West End and a putrid production of As You Like It NOT! that was most fun when Bob had a pint or two in and forgot all his words for Touchstone’s big scene. Mind you, it was hard to tell. He hardly got them right under the best of circumstances. Lovely, lovely, lovely man. Immensely charming. The kind of man who can charm women into doing anything. You could’ve dropped him in the middle of the Sahara and in half an hour he’d find some woman willing to wash his socks and make a nice fry-up (I’m referring to an earlier, simpler time, when it was still permissible to call people ‘darling’ backstage at Covent Garden). Also a wonderful Doolittle in a very poor Pygmalion.

I’m having a hideously boring and brutally edited (down to the required 750 words) op-ed run on CNN.com tomorrow, topic a recent and depressing American Lung Assn report on how bad the air is in the US. Here in CA, we have 6 of the 7 worst areas in the country. We win!

So I was thinking how much better this would be if Benedick wrote it. I think that he is the best writer among us and, let’s face it, for a mass audience nothing piques interest like dance belt scandals and stories of famous stage actors barfing. And maybe photos of the dogs.

@Dodgerblue: Back when I wrote a monthly geek column for the local alt-weekly, 750 words equaled precisely three thoughts. No more, no less. I’m my own brutal editor.

@nojo: 1. The air is really, really bad. 2. Cars and trucks are the biggest polluters. 3. Clean energy can save us.

@Dodgerblue: Needs more sex:

1. The air is really, really bad, vagina.
2. Cars and trucks are the biggest polluters, penis.
3. Clean energy and hot boys cupcaking can save us.

It’s Pulitzer time, baby.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: Throw in that missing airplane and we’ve got a winner.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: Points off for making me go to Urban Dictionary for “cupcaking”.

@Dodgerblue: That’s not writing, that’s tweeting.

Add poor environmental air quality to the list of what triggers my gag reflex, said the actress to the bishop.

@Dodgerblue: I’m pretending to be embarrassed.

The air is so bad you’ll cough up your lungs on your chips like ketchup.

Does this car make my ass look fat? (not aimed at Catt whose ass could possibly be in proportion to the rest of his body)

Green Energy! a new musical by Andrew Lord Webber. The curtain rises on a seedy boxing gym. A handsome muscular man (Hugh Jackman making a triumphant Broaway return) punches one of those long stuffed leather thingies, sweat everywhere, throbbing in the orchestra, and also in the stalls, as he punches, punches, punches the bag he sings:

Ell DEE SEES
It’s the way of the future
Almost no lost energy
Unlike when I pound this bag for hours!
And hours and hours!!

A dance interlude that involves a good deal of gymnastics. And also shirt ripping.

Upstage, a door is slammed open. A young man (Cheyenne Jackson fresh off his triumph in Selfies: The Musical! during which he stopped the show with Take Ahold of Yourself) is framed in a halo of light. The orchestra engages in a synthed drama. Bongadabonadabongada. The interloper is younger. Muscular. Aggressive. With a 2 day shadow. He regards the older muscular man who is now drenched in sweat and sings:

Bring em on Ell DEE SEES
I can take it
I can make it
All on my own!
It’s a new day
A new way!
A new way to look at
Energy!

Both men engage in shadow boxing. And a certain amount of tasteful wrestling. It’s not porn if you’re wearing a dance belt.

We can take it
We can take Green Energeeeee!

Then there is choreography. I see dancing boys. And sweat. Seems to me that sweat is the selling point. It usually is.

@Benedick: creativity is a curse, really.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: There are visions dancing in my head.

@Dodgerblue: I’m rather surprised about LA’s air quality. I thought that it had improved much more than the reports indicate, and I suspect that it varies greatly throughout the region. My guess is that it’s cleaner on the Westside and Santa Monica, and harsher in the Valley, Downtown, and southeast areas of the megalopolis (for more shocking insights, I also offer advice on everything from relationships to short selling).

I’m also surprised by Seattle’s good scores, since I notice a big difference in air quality when we leave the city and go out to the islands or the countryside. Maybe the rain washes it all away?

@¡Andrew!: You’ll be shocked to know that the air in the LA area is better where the Whiteys live.

@Benedick: Have you sold the movie rights? I know people at Warner Bros.

And a propos of musicals, I just saw Audra McDonald on the Colbert show. Holy Mother of Jesus!

@Dodgerblue: I love the De Niro in you, Sweet Dodger.

@Dodgerblue: Apparently DC is 8th worst. News to me, to be honest.

@mellbell: Maybe humidity counts. I’ve been in DC in August.

Al Feldstein, longtime editor of Mad Magazine, passed away today.

/on topic tirade/

Well, not really a tirade, more of a lament. I spent three years earning one of the “good” graduate degrees that’s supposed to payoff, and even though I also had academic scholarships, I’m gonna be paying on my student loans until the crematorium pushes the button. There simply are not enough decent jobs to go around, and it really says something about our country that going to grad school now easily can be a life-ruining decision.
And yes, I met with a business broker regarding starting my own business or buying an existing one, only to discover that no bank will provide financing because of my (wait for it) student loans. It’s incredibly perverse that simply furthering one’s education can in itself cause lifelong hardship and reinforce economic, social, and class barriers. So sad. And let’s not even mention the mathematical impossibility of saving for retirement, long-term care, or college educations for children who’ll be attending in the 2020s when four years of tuition, room and board at a state school is projected to be over $300k.

@¡Andrew!: Let’s just blame Millennials for taking on enormous loans to fund formerly affordable college educations. More fun that way!

I don’t recall what my mid-Eighties philosophy boot camp cost, probably because I covered it as a GTF (teacher’s aide, basically). Heck, even my self-funded appendectomy was only three grand.

@¡Andrew!: Isn’t this going to be the next bubble to burst? I didn’t go to college but can understand your plight. One of the attractions of coming to the States was to put behind me the grinding caste system of England. Now we seem to be gleefully heading into something worse. My own horror is long-term care. Being – ahem – gay and with a husband likely to croak before me and no children to guilt into wiping my ass I live in fear of being made destitute from needing to have a nurse’s aide come in once a week.

@¡Andrew!:
I hear you. I work with a few people in your situation and it makes me angry because these people could make something of themselves but circumstances and the greed of a few/assholishness of many prevent that from happening.

A good friend of mine is running a struggling startup right now. He was telling me about how fucking useless jawb creators (aka vulture… uh venture capitalists) have been. The terms of the VC have been onerous to say the least. Basically, for a pittance they get most of the profit and ownership (if the product is a success) while the guys who sweated and bled for it get jack. Also doesn’t help that a VC’s expectations are unreal. Want a 6X to 10X rate of return or nothing. Why? Because they only invest in companies that have the illusion of having money. Ever wonder why so many tech startups flame out or are discovered to be bullshit? This is why. Only someone so desperate or a con man, er, career entrepreneur would sign would want to sign a deal with the devil.

I could write a screed about this, but I’m too exhausted from working 60 hour weeks to do much.

@ManchuCandidate: My lot right now seems to be “do this for free and maybe we’ll get funding later”.

Which is actually fine, if the project is interesting and helps me develop my app chops. My sole condition: I own my code if you don’t pay for it.

This is really good. Elizabeth Drew on Johnson and the civil rights act.

I think she’s the most interesting political reporter we have.

@Benedick: I’ve never understood the rap on her. Then again, I also greatly preferred the pre-Tina New Yorker.

@Benedick: Dirksen was a marvelous orator.

@Dodgerblue: I know the name but I really don’t know anything about him. I just thought she was so interesting about what Johnson did and didn’t do.

@nojo: I think she’s always interesting and always informed. Not unlike me myself.