Open Thread

Cobble, QUIT referring to yourself as middle-aged. You are upper youth at best. I went to Lincoln Center with a French lady friend the other night. We got totally dolled up (her rule “no dress for success”!!) and went out to dinner afterward where the conversation went to one of her favorite topics / learned from her mother —

Never talk about your age. (of course, I do sometimes and she violently corrects me!) Never offer information, don’t go too far back with historical references (like the yen trade info offered above), never apologize, never explain.

Never answer questions about your age. It is fine to be mysterious about it — she went into detail the other night “correcting me” i.e. when giving a talk or something like that, NEVER go back too far historically, which of course COULD give you gravitas, but resist the temptation. She also told me I was indirectly bragging about somethings I said in this vein. If you are with a younger man, never bring up age, which is something which could make HIM uncomfortable.

Of course, if you feel you are being discriminated against in the workplace, nail ’em to the wall. I have a good lawyer.

FUCK HIPSTERS.

So I’m sitting in the courtroom with about 50 other potential jurors. The defendant is there, so are counsel and the judge and court staff. The judge is asking us a bunch of questions to screen out people who shouldn’t even make it to voir dire. I’m sitting in the jury box next to some dumb hipster chick with skinny black jeans and sneakers and herpes all over her face. She takes out a sketch pad and amuses herself by drawing the defendant. When she’s done with that, she gets bored and raises her hand when the judge asks if anyone has any reason they can’t be impartial with a police officer as a witness. She gets in line with the other people who raised their hand and goes up and tells the judge how she just thinks cops are corrupt and bad and blah blah blah and they always mistreat her and she just can’t be impartial. Judge has to let her go.

Meanwhile there’s a girl to my left, 22 years old, real quiet and respecful manner. She tells the judge during voir dire the next day that her best friend was stabbed to death earlier this year, and a couple of her cousins were murdered back in the 90s, and the cops didn’t really do shit to help her and her family, but she thinks she can do her best to be impartial. Some other woman talks about how the cops ignored her when her husband came home to a robbery and got beaten so bad he had to spend 4 days in the ICU. Another guy lives in bed stuy and has gotten arrested a few times and he knows lots of people in jail. A bunch of these people got dismissed, but they all said they would try to be impartial and it was probably defense counsel who dinged them. So fuck that worthless little skinny jeans wearing hipster bitch and her selfish attitude. There were real people there with real problems and none of them pulled the shit she pulled. I hope the herpes eats her face off.

am just going on the record as saying that Bar Toto in Park Slope really has amazingly good pizza – the best I have ever eaten!!!

m4l, bonds are a crowded trade right now. You really think they’re going to go up in price much more??? When retail starts buying bonds to the extent it has, the game is over.

I’m sure every merrill Lynch retail salesman out there is stuffing bonds down the throats of the clients.

DIBS, window shopping is fine