Number one with a Bullitt

Well, I don’t quite know what to think.

McQueen.

Back.

Inspiring multiple lines of menswear.

The WSJ reports that manufacturers from Dolce & Gabbana to J. Crew are filling retail shops with clothing “inspired” by Steve McQueen’s film attire. Evidently the marketing pitch is along the lines of, “Steve was cool. Wear what he did & you’ll be just as cool.”

Oh, as if.

Still, just thinking about it is a bit of a blast from the past. These people are right—there can’t ever have been anyone as cool as McQueen. That guy grabbed attention just walking into the shot. Put him in The Magnificent Seven, up against Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, James Coburn, a lot of horses & the Mexican countryside—he still ate up the screen. One pink shirt throughout the whole movie.

Or The Great Escape—German uniform or cut-off-sleeved sweatshirt, tossing that baseball against the cooler wall or making moonshine for Independence Day, he delivered his lines with the quintessential American brash insouciance. ("You're crazy, you know that? You oughta be locked up!")

The Thomas Crown Affair, Le Mans, Love with the Proper Stranger, Bullitt, Sand Pebbles…it didn’t matter what clothes he sported, the coolness came from within. It was being the star who gave producers the jim-jams by doing his own stunts with fast vehicles. It was drinking too much but still making morning makeup.

I know this is nothing new, but I’m going to get a really good giggle out of seeing today’s metrosexuals thinking they’ll take on some of McQueen’s persona by wearing a bomber jacket or a pair of chinos or a watch.

It ain’t the clothes on the man, silly; it’s the man in the clothes.

Madoff update

In case you were wondering, it seems the SEC inspectors—who investigated Bernie Madoff no fewer than six times (in response to complaints) over the course of 16 years—weren't on the take; they were merely extraordinarily incompetent.

That’s according to a report by the SEC’s inspector general released yesterday. It sounds like these investigators were not only dullards of incredible density, but they weren’t capable of following a lead if it was playing Sousa & displaying eight-by-ten color glossy photos with circles & arrows & a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is.

& Madoff managed to turn this ineptitude to his advantage by essentially assuring investors that his operations had been cleared multiple times by the Feds, so of course their money was safe…

Frankly, I don’t know which is worse—having oversight people who are smart but on the take, or just plain too stupid to detect their way out of a paper bag. Either way, we get screwed.

Civic amenities

Over the weekend I had to go to my local branch of the Seattle Public Library to return four books & pick up one I had on hold. The forcing function was that as of Monday, 31 August, the entire library system is closed tighter than a tavern under Prohibition. It doesn't reopen until 8 September.

They’ve been announcing it on the local public radio stations (the assumption being, I guess, that if you listen to NPR, you may also read, you know, books). Not only the libraries, but the book drops are sealed. That’s because there’ll be no one there to empty them for eight days.

(They’ve assured us that you won’t be charged a fine for any book due during this period. Yeah, right.)

Even the website & book catalog are dead—just this placeholder announcing the closure in 15 languages.

The culprit is budget cuts.

At least the King County Library System is open. &, from what I’ve seen so far, that system holds more volumes & is better organized than Seattle’s.

Still, for a city that touts itself as the intellectual vortex of the universe, this is a pretty piss-poor state of affairs.

Readin', writin', self-justification

Although you wouldn’t have credited either of them with full functional literacy, two recently ex-governors are cranking out self-serving memoirs geared to vindicate their antics in office.

First off the press is the impeached Rod Blagojevich’s unimaginatively-titled The Governor, due out this month. In it he apparently manages to slag off everyone associated with him or the state of Illinois. Frankly, I can’t even follow the summary of all the he-saids/he-saids; but have a go at it yourself.

Then there’s the poster girl for the neo-cons, Sarah Palin. According to her father, she’s knee deep in writing her own memoirs. She’s been emailing him for details about all the fascinating incidents in her past starring herself. No info on title or when that tome will be unleashed, but you know it’s going to be a best-seller.

Of course, the really big question is: who’s supplying these morons the crayons for their literary efforts.

The Program

A few months ago my employer sponsored a free health screening—you know, the vitals the nurse takes every time you walk into a doctor’s office; height, weight, BP, blood work, etc.

It was quite interesting—they had machines that gave you the cholesterol and glucose readings in just a few minutes.

However, the results for me were…eye-opening. Not one single number was anywhere near healthy. (Well, can’t do much about height; but the rest were really borderline appalling.) I’m attributing it to the effects of this area on me, but regardless, clearly something had to be done.

I talked it over with my doctor and decided to follow a program at my gym. Things were in such a state I just knew I wasn’t going to be able to deal with the situation without someone monitoring me very closely. The program (like the screening) is sponsored by my employer so I have to pay only about 25% of the costs. It’s called 20/20 Lifestyles, and it involves highly structured diet and exercise components.

For the past seven weeks I’ve met with a nutritionist once a week and a trainer three times a week, so I’m never far from scrutiny. In addition, I have to keep an online food log, documenting what I’m eating (for now, only what they tell me to) and wear a pedometer that uploads data on how many steps I walk per day and work out on my own two to three days per week.

On the exercise side, I have a terrific trainer. Penelope at the Pro Sports Club started me out with about 15 minutes on the treadmill (which was all I could manage), plus 45 minutes of strength training. Now I’m doing 25 minutes on the stairmaster, that machine from hell, and 35 minutes of weights. On my off days, it’s 30 minutes each on the stairmaster and the treadmill. She’s got me doing crunches about twelve ways from Sunday, in addition to working my biceps and triceps like I don’t think they’ve ever been before.

I’m so jazzed by how I feel that every couple of weeks I go in on Saturday to do an extra workout, which rather scares even me.

(Using the pedometer is interesting: turns out that when you know you’re being tracked you go out of your way to rack up the steps. You become purposely inefficient: instead of looping picking up a printout from the copy room with getting a coffee at the kitchen next to it, you make two trips. When folding laundry, instead of stacking it up and making a single trip to the dresser or closet, you do each piece one by one.)

The nutrition has been equally enlightening. The program starts you on nothin’ but protein (in the form of rather unpalatable protein shakes and lean fish or meat) and berries for the first week. The theory is that you’re detoxifying your system, and I have to say that—although boring—it’s bearable and did seem to do the trick.

The second week you get vegetables, then non/low-fat cheeses. In week 4 comes FROOOOOT, which was just gorgeous. (Turns out that ripe peaches with Greek yoghurt are about as good a dessert as you can get.) I went rather overboard in buying it, because it was early August and fruit was hitting its peak around here. For a while my kitchen counter looked like I breed monkeys, it was so full of fruit.

But here’s the thing—for seven weeks I’ve ingested not a trace of alcohol (no Pinot Grigio—in the summer!). No sugar, no bread, no cookies. No butter, no sauces, no chocolate (since you can’t count the shakes that are allegedly chocolate, but taste more like cardboard). Not even so much as a Caffeine-free Diet Coke (even fake sugar gives you a taste for sweets). And it hasn’t bothered me.

The program takes a boatload of organization. Not so much the exercise part; after you've got used to getting up at 0430 to meet Penelope at the machine from hell at 0500, you just do it. It's the food you have to round up. There's breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner; seems like every time you turn around you're eating again. And you have to have your meat/fish, your veg and your extra protein (yoghurt or cheese) with fruit. If you've not planned for it all, it's hard to pull the whole thing out of your pocket on the fly.

My birthday earlier this month was the first one in…well, living memory…that didn’t involve champagne. And my big treat for myself was to buy some new gym clothes.

The worst part of the program is the videos you have to watch (on an exercycle) after each training session. These are educational pieces, starring Dr. Ego, the founder of the program. Basically they’re just a chance for him to pontificate onscreen while stating and restating the blindingly obvious. And they don’t take into account people who don’t learn well from pictures, but do better with words on paper. To tell you the truth, I give each one ten minutes, then I turn off the screen and hit the showers.

Well, I’m almost halfway through Phase I (weight loss) and am feeling much better than when I started. Not down to my skinny clothes yet; but the fat ones are loosening up.

Phase I starts in October, when I’ll be able to have the occasional glass of wine and maybe a cookie. At that point I train with Penelope twice a week and see the nutritionist every fortnight. That's where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, since you're managing your behavior more on your own.

So far I’ve been happy with my progress, And I’m looking forward to seeing what my numbers are when I have my blood work redone in five weeks.

Net nuts

Joe Queenan’s latest piece for the WSJ is a take on book reviews in the age of anyone-can-opine-on-any-subject-on-the-Internet. It’s not Queenan at his most acerbic, but it’s got its points.

(I have to say that most of the reviews I've seen on Amazon tend toward the five-star variety. Even people who say the book was so-so give it five stars. Makes you wonder if they understand the whole rating concept. Or maybe they're like classical music audiences in LA who'll give performers a standing ovation if they make it to the end of the piece.)

What I find interesting is the comments. Two points in particular:

The very fact that people feel obliged to go through the registration process in order to add their frequently quasi-illiterate comments proves my characterization of the age in the first graf, above.

For the most part they seem to have missed the point that Queenan is a satirist. Obviously the idea that you should get a grip on that which you’re commenting on is not a part of this equation.

Touch the happy isles

It’s certainly a cliché, but the death of Ted Kennedy really does mark the end of an era. The last of his generation of Kennedys dedicated to the concept of public service.

I wasn’t a particularly huge fan, but it’s clear that he was a driving force in the Senate for at least 35 years. (He held back for the first few years in office.) & he won the respect of colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Can’t say that of too many incumbents these days. In any legislature.

News reports are citing Kennedy’s concession to Carter at the 1980 Democratic Convention as his greatest speech. In it he quoted some lines from Tennyson that he said were close to both his brothers & himself:

"I am a part of all that I have met....
Tho much is taken, much abides....
That which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

That’s a cobbled-together mashup of “Ulysses”, one of my own favorite poems from the romantic period. It’s interesting that Kennedy was then 48 when he cited it; & that his brothers were both in their forties when they were murdered, & had already latched onto the poem.

The reason I find it interesting is that “Ulysses” is the musing of the hero of the Trojan war—as an aged man all too aware of his growing feebleness. The king of Ithaca is looking back at his long life & ahead at a future that can’t possibly live up to the past. It’s an old man’s tale, not a young one’s.

What is certainly applicable to Kennedy (& perhaps to his brothers, too) is Ulysses’ resolution to not go gentle into that good night, even at his age & condition. “I will live life to the lees,” he vows.

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”

I rather think of Ted Kennedy, working phones from his sickbed to garner support for his lifelong cause of healthcare for all Americans, as scorning to rust unburnished. There was a grey spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge if ever there was one.

Ulysses talks of the responsibility of statesmanship, of the decades of governing his people & the legacy he’s leaving to his son, Telemachus.

& the final section is him planning another voyage—gathering the lads from his old unit, outfitting a ship & setting sail into the unknown. Here are the complete last lines:

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

& that’s a picture of Ted Kennedy-made weak by time & disease, but strong in will—& never yielding.

The GM MBA course

Poor old General Motors—even the “new” GM can’t seem to manage its way out of a paper bag. And it can’t seem to sell off its own toxic assets, which is a key part of it rising from the dead.

The Associated Press reports that the company is squabbling with Germany over dumping its Opel/Vauxhall unit. GM’s scrapped the proposed sale to a group headed by Canadian auto parts manufacturer Magna, even though the deal was backed by €4.5B ($6 B) from the German government.

This despite the fact that Opel is a money pit for GM.

The company seems stuck in the same time warp as some Seattle home sellers—thinking they should be able to get 25% over what they paid for the property two years ago. Hello? That horse is long out of the barn.

Actually, what GM is after is to escape any liability for Opel defaulting on any of its debts in the future.

Well—this corporate weaseling out of responsibility has worked for GM so far. Witness my tax dollars supporting their special welfare system.

On a side “we’re-not-accountable” note, GM has also announced that it’s removing its “Mark of Excellence” logo from whatever it makes going forward. Not that it ever meant much anyhow.

And it’s probably a cost-cutting measure—save on materials and labor—rather than any admission that their products have earned them an ever-diminishing market share over the past few decades.

Really—these clowns would make any B-school proud.

Room service

If the idea of a staycation just makes you want to barf, here are some hotel suggestions from Bing’s Budget Travel: weird hotels.

I have to say none of them makes me want to whip out the plastic & book a stay. But the one that has been tiptoeing around my brain for a few years is the Ice Hotel. That’s the place in the Arctic Circle of Sweden that’s constructed out of actual, you know, arctic ice blocks every winter.

Over the years they’ve developed a whole schtick out of the concept. There’s a restaurant & a bar. In the latter, your vodka is served in glasses of ice. You’re issued arctic outerwear to put over your normal warm stuff & in what they’re now referring to as “cold rooms” you sleep on a bunch of fur pelts over a block of ice.

I don’t know why this should appeal to me, since I’m not a fan of cold weather. I think it’s a combination of the possibility of watching the Aurora Borealis & drinking vodka out of ice glasses.

Of course, I am a little concerned about needing to, er, dispense with the, erm, processed vodka. I mean—how quickly can one drop one’s multiple layers of warm clothes to take a whiz? & then get them back on?

Anyhow—my contribution to your leisure possibilities.

Begging your attention

The elephant in the room that Seattleites never seem to want to bring up is the number of beggars you see around town.

I was struck by the population in downtown Seattle the first time I went to the Nordstrom Mother Church—you can’t walk through the Pioneer Square area without wading through panhandlers cadging money.

I haven’t seen that sort of thing outside of Skid Row or a third world country.

Yeah, there are homeless on exhaust grates in DC, but not whole colonies of them; & go out into the ‘burbs & you don’t come across moochers trying to make eye contact.

Here—they’re all over. On the Redmond Road & 148th Avenue exits off the 520 in Redmond; the 8th & 4th Street ramps in Bellevue off the 405; the 45th & 50th Street exits (both north & southbound) off the 5 in Seattle. (On one, where there are a couple of islands, I’ve seen three beggars staked out at once.) On 45th & Montlake, by University Village a 20-something tattooed chick alternates with the more typically grizzled male.

Which brings me to another point—these people are regulars. The one at the Redmond Road/520 ramp brings a cooler & a lawn chair. Ditto the one on the Ravenna Avenue exit off the 5; he always waggles his fingers at you. I don’t know whether he’s putting a curse on you or just thinks he needs to do that to grab your attention.

They also cluster around Trader Joe’s & Whole Foods in Seattle. I presume the marketing strategy is that those establishments’ customer base are more likely to respond to victims of social injustice. The TJ on Roosevelt Avenue has even put up a sign telling customers that no one soliciting for anything outside the store is associated with it & that shoppers should in no way feel obligated to fork over.

Last Friday I even found one at a branch post office. He was careful to park himself on the sidewalk, not on post office property. But you couldn’t go in or out without passing him.

I don’t know what this signifies. I can’t believe that the King County has a larger population of the underclass than other cities, or a greater percentage, or even fewer social programs to help them. Apparently what it does have is an entrepreneurial approach to begging amongst them.