Eat, Drink & Be Larry: Clutch Chili Recipe

Chili recipes are like opinions and @$$holes...everybody has one. Here's mine:

• 3 large onions, preferably Vidalias or something close, finely chopped
• 3 poblano peppers, finely chopped (but the store I was at this morning only had 2 left so I had to toss in an Anaheim). Poblanos to me are the soul of Latin-inspired cooking. Substitute these for any recipe that calls for regular bell peppers to give your recipe a nice backbone.
• 2 jalapeno peppers, finely chopped
• 2 serrano peppers (these are so small there's no way to chop them other than finely chopped
• 2 shallots

Toss all of above in a big chili pot. Add a bit of olive oil and salt and turn on medium-high heat to sweat it all out.

I use 7 cans of Goya beans in the recipe...usually 1 of each of the following:

• Dark kidneys
• Red kidneys
• Pink
• Dominican red
• Black-eyed peas
• Pinto (why Pinto? AAAARRRRGGGGP...why not?!)
• Central American red (these can get a little pasty but they work) or another can of Dark Kidneys. Also if you can find the Colombian Cargamanto beans, these are awesome too. Can always substitute any of these out for each other to taste.

Please be sure to drain the beans in the strainer before adding into the pot - maybe 2-3 cans at a time.

• 2 or 3 cans crushed tomatoes

Stir up what you have so far and add spices as follows to taste. I said "add to taste," not "add to bland." DON'T BE SHY:

• Chili powder
• Hot Mexican-style chili powder
• Cumin (especially not shy with this stuff. People forget about cumin. To me it's mission-critical).
• Cayenne pepper
• Black pepper
• 3 bay leaves
• Onion powder
• Franks' Red Hot Sauce (yeah, I put that $#!+ on everything, too)
• Salt (actually forgot this one as a given in the original post - my bad!)

Mix in everything well. By now you can bring the heat down to low/medium low and cover it all up.

Beer helps with chili. Maybe 1/2 to a full robust, malty beer. Think stouts, quads, barleywine, old ale, Scotch ale or something dark and Belgian-ish. Some of my favorites:

• Boulevard Dark Truth Imperial Stout
• Boulevard Sixth Glass Quadrupel
• Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marrron
• Unibroue Maudite (the best beer with a burger EVAH!!!)
• Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
• Stone Imperial Russian Stout
• Anything from a crowler from one of your local microbrewing oases

Throw in a pinch of sugar and add the beer...if there's anything left, go ahead and drink the rest. You earned it.

Now if you're one of those plant-eaters you could probably stop now. I am not, so I will continue...

• 1.5-2.0 pounds chorizo. Brown, drain the fat and add to the pot.
• 1.5-2.0 pounds ground beef (chuck or round...80-85% lean works), SEASONED. For Crissake, please season the meat. Ground beef tastes like nothing without seasoning. Add some of the same seasonings you used for the base - maybe even toss in some paprika. Same instructions for the chorizo: Brown, drain and add to the pot.

You're pretty much done with the heavy lifting. Turn the heat down to about as low as you can go without the flame going out. Stir every 20 minutes or so. Every hour taste to add more seasoning as necessary. Again, DON'T BE SHY. Crack open another beer. You earned a full one.

What's awesome about chili (besides everything)?

• It's easy AF to whip up a batch
• Feeds a fair amount of people...even for a few days
• It's one of those dishes that's completely to taste, so there shouldn't be any "that's not what it's supposed to taste like" whining from anyone
• Can be as cheap as you need to make it
• Great dish to whip up when you're a poor college student to impress your peeps

Once ready to serve, shred some cheese over the top of each bowl. Sharp cheddar works and so does pepper jack and even manchego. Cornbread goes really well on the side, too. Enjoy!

#BondAid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

It's Christmastime
There's no need to be afraid
At Christmastime
That CLO tranche is Triple-A

Now in a world of defaults
We done securitized 'em all
Slap a wrapper 'round that junk
It's Christmastime!

But say a prayer
Pray for the "liquid" ones
At Christmastime
It's hard when they gate their funds

Yeaaahhh...

The CDS spreads blew up
And we're leveraged to the hilt
And the only orders filling
Are for bunds, greenbacks and gilts

And the high yield market's ringing
With the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them
Instead of you!

Well there won't be gains in Triple-Cs this Christmastime
That toxic waste, those bids are down at twelve...
Ooo-ooohhh...

Third Av & Stone Lion spoke
Their redemption windows broke
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Here's to you
Raise a glass to everyone
Here's to them
There's no flow for anyone
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Mom's Basement (The Mt. Gox Bitcoin Blues), inspired by Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner"

Here's my satirical commemoration of the implosion of Mt. Gox. I wrote a couple of verses via text this morning on the way from the gym to the office. Enjoy...

"Mom's Basement," inspired and to the tune of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner"

I have Dungeons, I have Dragons
I have cookies that my mom baked
I live downstairs in her basement
Never been with a real woman...

...and even though I'm 30
I have never moved out of the house
I use my Poli Sci degree
At the comic book store

...

I use alternative currency
To pay for goods and service
Even at the corner bike shop
Where they lube my big-ass skateboard...

...but I have a major problem
I can't pay my EVR bar tab
'Cause Mt. Gox lost all my Bitcoin
So I'm really fucking broke

do do do do
do do do do
do do do do
do do do do

do do do do
do do do do
do do do do
do do do do

...

Eat, Drink and Be Larry: Favorite Beers with Favorite Foods

Everyone talks about wine pairings with food. Listen, I enjoy a suitable glass of wine with whatever meal I'm having (OK, whatever dinner I'm having. Maybe a little inappropriate for breakfast and lunch). Some of us enjoy beer, too. I've found that may dishes work almost as well with a good beer as they do with a glass of wine. So, as a not-so-little cheat sheet, here is a catalog of some of my favorite beers with some of my favorite meals.

Steak

Style: Imperial Stout
Top Choice: Serpent's Stout by the Lost Abbey

For several years I've been convinced that the best restaurant for a steak is right in my backyard on my charcoal-fired Weber grill. Montreal seasoning does the trick...it's that simple and available at your regular grocery store. After propping the thick (~2-3") strip or ribeye upright to let the fat side burn to a crisp for about 90 seconds, I hit the other edge for about a minute and sear on each flat side for about 3:30. The result is a nicely-charred piece of meat that's still nicely rare and juicy on the inside.

Of course, everyone knows that a nice Cabernet with loads of tannin is the perfect complement to a steak...no argument here. BUT...there are quite a few solid stouts that are up to the job. Serpent's Stout is by far the best of the lot. The char of the dark malts (with an absence of astringency typical of black patent malt) tie in nicely with the char of the steak, while a rich sweetness on the finish meshes perfectly with the juiciness of the meat. Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey has provided us with the best...steak beer...ever. No need to polish off the entire bottle by yourself...it comes in 750s and clocks in at 11% ABV. Have a glass each with your dining partner and alternate between stout and the glass of Cab that's sitting right next to it...in the privacy of your own home, of course. Try it...you won't be disappointed.

If you can't find Serpent's Stout, there are a number of others that work well:

Imperial Russian Stout, Stone Brewing Company
12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, also from Stone Brewing Company (not may of these left in circulation, though)
Imperial Stout Trooper, New England Brewing Company
Ten FIDY, Oskar Blues
Cadillac Mountain Stout, Bar Harbor/Atlantic Brewing Company
Expedition Stout, Bell's Beer
Black Ops, Brooklyn Brewery
Black Chocolate Stout, Brooklyn Brewery

For the record, my favorite Cab with steak has been a 2001 bottle of Larkmead. For every day consumption, Concha y Toro Marques de Casa Concha from Chile runs $15-18 at Costco and works just fine.


Burgers

Style: Belgian Dark Strong Ale or American Dark Strong Ale
Top Choice: Maudite, Unibroue

There are a lot of ways you can go with a beer and a burger; lots of stuff works. However, Maudite works far and away better than others. It may be kind of surprising that a beer from Quebec does wonders with one of America's staples, but it's true. The moderately dark Belgian malt of a Maudite, coupled with the traditional spice profile, make perfect complements to a hamburger fresh off the grill.

Others deserving of mention:

Cold Front, Ithaca Brewing Company

Sixth Glass, Boulevard Brewing Company

Lasagna

Style: Brown Ale, Amber Ale, American Dark Strong Ale (but not a hoppy version)
10 Commandments, Lost Abbey

Lasagna and traditional red sauce Italian are problematic for beer pairings to many. Many people cringe at the thought of beer with Italian food. Italian = red wine. It has to be this way, right? As with steak, such fare is best paired with solid red wines of the region...but if you are insistent on a beer pairing, you really can't go wrong with 10 Commandments. It's a deep dark ale with a hint of rosemary. Be careful, though...at ~10.3% ABV it packs a bit of a punch. Still, it works very well. I'm not sure why Lost Abbey manages to get this honor twice, but it does. Coincidence? I don't think so; Lost Abbey beers seem to work very well with food...perhaps its the hint of various spices found in many of their offerings.

Absent 10 Commandments, I'd prefer a somewhat inert amber to brown ale that has enough heft to withstand the heartiness and spice found in such cuisine and to serve as a sponge for the flavors of the dish. Some possibilities:

Great Pumpkin Ale, Cambridge Brewing Company
Attic and Eaves, Slumbrew Brewing Company

Chili

Style: American Dark Strong Ale or Stout
Top Choice: Dark Truth, Boulevard Brewing Company

An awesome fall to winter comfort food, chili brings about all kinds of warmth as winter approaches. Big chili flavors deserve a big beer with a hint of smoke. Dark Truth by Kansas City's Boulevard Brewing Company fits the bill. It has a hint of sweetness to balance the heat and just enough smoked malt to add as a complement to all of the onions, hot peppers and beans (not to mention beef) in a traditional pot of chili. Go ahead and add a few ounces to your pot as well to bring about a more smoky taste should you prefer.

backburner, Southern Tier Brewing Company
Bigfoot Barley Wine, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Pork

Style: Belgian Strong Pale Ale or Tripel
Top Choice: Don de Dieu, Unibroue

Some brewers happen to churn out beers that go really well with food. Lost Abbey is one, and so is Unibroue. This light-colored yet strong Belgian-style ale is perfect with the delicate underlying flavors of a roast loin of pork, while the mild sweetness complements the more bold savory elements of black pepper, rosemary and whatever else you throw in there. DdD also works well with BBQ pork ribs fresh out of the smoker...although for that you may want something a little bolder (such as the Sixth Glass by Boulevard mentioned above). Other possibilities:

Long Strange Tripel, Boulevard Brewing Company
Duvel

Lobster

Style: American Wild Ale (a pale, very dry version with more sour than funk) or Saison
Top Choice: Brute, Ithaca Brewing Company

Well, not a lot cuts the 2 lbs. of butter involved in ingesting "the cockroach of the sea" as Mainers (Mainahs?) so deftly put it as Champagne or other dry, sparkling wines. However, the dry sourness of Ithaca Brute (not coincidentally, finished with Champagne yeast) brings about a nice substitute. Keep an open mind because the Brett-tinged "sours" may not be for everybody, but Brute is a little shorter on funk and longer on tart. If you don't have access to or aren't into sours, use a really dry Saison...and I mean dry. Possibilities:

d'Erpe-Mere, De Glazen Toren
Carnevale, Lost Abbey
Saison de Lente, The Bruery (this gives you a sour hint of Brett found in the Brute with a traditional Saison feel)

Thai dishes

Style: Tripel
Top Choice: Trade Winds Tripel, The Bruery

This may be a little cop-out since Trade Winds is brewed with Thai basil, but screw it. It works, as do most Tripels with Thai food. As with the dryness of a Saison with the heft and creaminess of lobster, the mild sweetness of a Tripel cuts through the thick curries and coats, soothes and relieves the sometimes extreme heat of spicy Thai dishes. Of course, the Thai basil of Trade Winds sews a common thread across the table. Other winners include:

Tripel Karmeliet
Long Strange Tripel, Boulevard Brewing Company (just like the old lady in the Frank's Red Hot Sauce commercial, "I put that $#!+ on everything!")
Allagash Tripel, Allagash Brewing Company
Tripel Threat, Cambridge Brewing Company

Indian Food

Style: Tripel, Saison, Hefeweizen or Pilsener
Top Choice: Hennepin, Ommegang

Many Indian dishes are heartily spiced and carry a fair amount of heft. Accordingly, a somewhat spritely Saison with a hint of spciness works nicely to lighten the load on your stomach. Hennepin is a reasonably-priced and readily available straight ahead Saison that's dry enough to give your palate a breather but not so dry that it becomes astringent. It works great with chicken tikka masala as an example. Other solid complements of note:

Saison Vos, Sly Fox Brewing Company
Mamma's Little Yella Pils, Oskar Blues Brewing Company
Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen, Weihenstephan (sic?)

Thanksgiving Dinner

Style: American Brown Ale, American Dark Strong Ale, Saison, Dubbel

Top Choice: Autumn Maple, The Bruery

C'mon now. The thing's brewed with yams. What's not to like? Patrick Rue and the peeps at The Bruery pretty much made this for Thanksgiving. Deep, dark malt meshes with a hint of yammy sweetness and slides in perfectly between the blunt savory goodness of turkey, stuffing and gravy and the sour and sweet of cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes. A Saison (by now you realize that Saisons go well with a lot of different foods) takes a different tack by bringing along some bright airiness to the meal. Don't go for an ultra-dry Saison here; something with a little more meat on the bone will do the trick.

Allagash Fluxus 2009, Allagash Brewing Company (brewed once so if it's in your cellar, good for you)
Sgt. Pepper, Cambridge Brewing Company
Westmalle Dubbel

Mexican Food

Style: Imperial/Double IPA

Top Choice: Stone IPA

Stone IPA is to beer what Tim Wakefield used to be to the Red Sox pitching staff. He could start, be a long man or even close if he had to. You could slot that guy in anywhere. Add his continuous and generous contributions to the Boston community and the guy was just a solid dude. Stone IPA is the same way. It'll work at the beach, for dinner, with pizza...anywhere. I like it with tacos and other Mexican fare. The hoppiness works nicely and it's about as easy-drinking of an IPA you'll ever come across. Heftier double/Imperial IPAs work nicely here too. Stone IPA is available just about everywhere but other solid choices include:

Double Wide IPA, Boulevard Brewing Company
Ruination, Stone Brewing Company (Stone IPA's big bad-@$$ brother)

I'll probably add to this list so please feel free to take a look every once in a while. A lot of food categories (examples: pizza, seafood) are so vast that it really depends on the specifics of what's on the plate. In any event, don't be shy to try some new stuff out with your meals. Maybe enjoy a glass each of beer AND wine with your meal (all the while drinking responsibly, of course) to see how each play off your meal. Cheers!

Dear Mitt: Flip the Big Bird to the Public Sector and Buy the Red Sox

After Tuesday's election showing, Mitt Romney told reporters that "he's not going away." Well, that's good to hear, Mitt. Many of us find the notion of a shrewd executive doing his best to make government run like a for-profit business with stuff like budgets and spending controls quite refreshing. However, Mitt may want to "explore other opportunities" that he may find more rewarding and less draining (both emotionally and financially) than his quest for public service. If I was Mitt's career coach (and he thanks his personal God that I'm not), here are a few ideas I'd float to the Man from Belmont:

Flip the Big Bird to the Public Sector

OK, Mitt...Newt Gingrich nailed you on this one during one of the primary debates. As you mentioned that you've been in the private sector, Newt popped off that if you had your way, you wouldn't have been because you've been running for office since 1994 when you spent ~$50 million running for Senate against Ted Kennedy. The only reason you weren't in the public sector is that you LOST. Let's see...

1994 Senate (L)
2003 Governor (W)
2008 President (L)
2012 President (L)

Dude...you're 1-3. Tony Danza's character on Taxi had a better boxing record than your election record. Let's stop spending the family fortune on losing elections and...

Slip into a cozy chair at Bain and get back to work

You want to make a real difference? How about getting back to what you do best...making boatloads of money. Why not? You can still do this and a Special Situations fund with your name all over it would leave a much more enjoyable legacy for your family than a ~$100+ million spent on elections with questionable results. Build and run a successful fund and replenish your family's legacy wealth. There are plenty of Special Situations around to refurbish, enhance and return to prosperity. You could make a much greater difference in this capacity than banging your head against the table because you have to listen to Lizzie Warren for the next four years. Once the investment period in the Bain Special MITTuation Fund wanes down and deals begin to roll off, maybe you can concentrate on what will most likely be the ultimate Special Situation...

Buy the Boston Red Sox

The drain is circling on the Sox right now. Sure, baseball ops can do their best to cobble together a competitive squad and slowly bring them back to contention. However, as long as Larry Lucchino is involved with that organization, he'll have a hand in baseball ops and will ultimately do something to &*(% them up. John Henry and Tom Werner won't combat him, so Boston is stuck with him and a dysfunctional ownership. This can't end well. How it will end is with an angry fan base and a franchise value about 20% off the Pink Hat peak from a year or so ago. What better special situation than the Boston Red Sox around 2017? By then turnaround artist Mitt will be ready for a new challenge. C'mon man...it'll be right there waiting for you. You thought turning around the Olympics was rewarding? Just wait...

Observations from last night's debate

Well, the kids at @bloombergtv had their evening in the sun with last night's GOP debate. I liked the structure quite a bit. However, this turned out to be a real showcase of this network's increasingly hard-left leaning, from ex-NPR moderator Charlie Rose to the downright rude interruption of Mitt Romney by @juliannagoldman. Here's a hint, Jules: The viewership isn't tuning in to hear you. Let the candidate speak and DON'T INTERRUPT. Even more nauseating was every Bloomie reporter with a Twitter account (yes, @lizzieohreally, I'm talking to you) praising her for this little bit of classlessness. Et tu @tomkeene? I expected a little more from a varsity letterman. We know which side of the aisle y'all fall on. Please humor us by masking it for at least a few seconds every now and then.

So how did everyone do?

Jon Huntsmann: There's no truth to the rumor that they had to squeeze in an extra chair at the table for him because debate organizers totally forgot he was still in this thing...but there should be.

Rick Perry: You showed up to a debate on one huge issue-the economy-without any semblance of an economic plan or any vision or insight. Camera cuts showed you as bewildered as Joey from Friends when he only bought the "K" volume of the encyclopedia and his other 5 codependents were talking about something that started with a "C" (or the other way around? Different letters? You get the idea). Cowboy down, li'l dogie.

Rick Santorum: He sounds like a guy with true knowledge and compassion about life an industry in a large swing state combined with an insider's knowledge on navigating Congress. If he didn't look like he was gonna snap into a full-blown nutty every time he spoke he may have a shot at bottom-billing on the ticket.

Michelle Bachmann: Spot on with ObamaCare. Reservations about adding a sales tax pipeline through Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan are legitimate. I don't think she's the right messenger. "Sarah Palin with experience and a brain" is still damning with faint praise.

Ron Paul: Three words: VAGABOND...RIGHT...EYEBROW.

Listen, buddy. I get it that you were excited that your Andy Rooney Halloween costume arrived early...but on national (or at least the subsection of "national" that actually knows which channel Bloomberg is) TV at a time when your support is marginal (yet still at least a little vigorous) is no time to break the thing out unless you're certain the glue will hold up in 2 hours of heat from studio lights.

Ronnie stuck to the libertarian script admirably. I want to unleash him like the Tasmanian Devil as Secretary of the Treasury just to see what would happen.

Mitt Romney: Mitt held serve. I applaud him for not backing down to a downright rude Julianna Goldman in defining "hypothetical," but acknowledge that her cronies had a field day with it. In the end, it doesn't matter. Herman Cain questioned the unwieldiness of his 59-point plan, which is entirely valid. Mitt came back with a thoughtful response that did no damage. Still the frontrunner.

Herman Cain: HC got the biggest bump in brand recognition last night. Every time a moderator or fellow candidate mentioned "9-9-9" it was a win for him. His biggest flub was a deadpan answer of "Alan Greenspan" as the Fed chief he respected most, but he qualified his answer with...ummm..."reasonable sufficiency." He, like Romney, held serve.

Newt Gingrich: Y'know when someone asks you to list something not entirely obscure but something you're not used to rattling off every day...like "all the members of the Ivy League?" There's always one on the list that's harder to remember than all of the others. For me and the Ivy League list, I always forget Brown. Sorry, Newt. This morning you're Brown. It's not that you didn't do well last night. Your answers were those of a skilled debater that knows how Congress, DC as a whole and the US economy and healthcare system work. It's just that...well, in the list of GOP candidates, this morning you were Brown...and that's that.

Toronto Dining Review: Lee

Last night, my Beautiful Bride and I visited Susur Lee's Toronto enclave, Lee. It had been quite a while since we enjoyed a night out at a "destination" restaurant so we both eagerly awaited the experience. The 9 PM seating on King Street West seemed a little late when I made the reservation, but it turned out to be extremely fortunate since work responsibilities resulted in an extra-late (although exceedingly fun and satisfying) lunch at The Only Cafe on the Danforth, which ended at around 3 PM, followed by a margarita, a Pisco sour and a few chips and amazing salsa at Eduardo Torres' La Cabana down the street. We made our way to Ossington and Queen, where we snagged a couple of beers at Sweaty Betty's. Then we took a 10-15 minute walk towards Lee and stopped into a BBQ joint next door to catch a least a little of the Bruins game, accompanied with a Maudite for me and a Creemore Springs Premium Lager for my Beautiful Bride. After the 1st period ended with the Bs up 1-0 (and by now we know how it ended), it was off next door to dinner.

We arrived to see a line of about 10 people who we presumed had reservations. However, 10 minutes in, the line hadn't really moved at all. Leave it to my Beautiful Bride to assert herself and speed along the process somehow and finally get us our table. We were seated at an extra-comfy corner table by the window. Our waitress was extremely friendly and offered up her suggestions on specials and drinks perhaps not with the most in-depth knowledge of the offerings, but with great enthusiasm. Good enough start? Sure. My peach lychee martini (Peachee Lychee?) was almost silky. Unfortunately, it took about 20 minutes to arrive at our table. Sure, it's a Friday night and the place was pretty well-filled. Still, the waitstaff across the board appeared frazzled, spastic and generally confused across the board. I can usually get past service issues if the food delivers, so let's see about what matters most...

We ordered two appetizers: the hot & sour soup and the signature Singapore slaw with salmon sashimi. We agreed that the hot & sour soup was the best hot & sour soup we've ever had in our lives. When you get hot & sour from a traditional take-out joint you consider elements of consistency, tang, heat and flavor (OK, maybe salt). Usually you have 2 of these elements truly firing. Good hot & sour may bring 3. This soup was almost velvety...by no means overpowering but its flavors worked in perfect synergy. The slaw was also quite good...perhaps a little heavy on the peanuts and sweetness, but the salmon provided a solid complement. I can't imagine this dish without the salmon; it would be a Gotham-style pile of peanuts and honey otherwise. The verdict? Quite enjoyable but perhaps not as breathtaking as a signature dish should be.

Something fell apart between the two appetizers and the "entree;" I mention entree in "quotation" "fingers" because our server indicated that it's most appropriate for each person to order two entrees since they're sized as tasting portions. Well, our 2-3 PM lunch left us less-than-starved, so we stuck with one each. Eventually, they actually showed up.

First up: Black cod over shrimp cake. True to the word of our waitress, it was indeed a tasting portion. We saw about 4 slivers of black cod and a fair amount of shrimp cake. Other than the service, this was the most disappointing aspect of our visit. The black cod was gently seasoned and obviously quite fresh, but that shrimp cake was thoroughly uninspiring. It literally had no flavor whatsoever while maintaining the consistency of a failed risotto.

Next we had the salmon ceviche, which was served in a row of six Oriental-style soup spoons. Because of its proximity to sushi, I suggested to our waitress that wasabi would be a nice complement. Unfortunately, there was no traditional wasabi to be had, but after a bit of prodding and several minutes wait, she emerged with some wasabi oil. This stuff was bright, lively and added a little bit of chill to the dish...and I can't imagine the salmon without it. Again, the dish on its own suffered from a little too much sweetness and needed that base-level kick of heat to merge its components correctly.

The wine list had a great proportion of younger offerings...perhaps 50-75 if I had to guess now. Since nothing really blew my doors off on the list, we kept it simple with a Riesling from the Niagara region of Ontario. It was OK but I would have appreciated a little more mid-range depth to the list.

Again we had a breakdown in service after the tasting portions. Our waitress seemed to be covering a little more ground than her capabilities could provide. Accordingly, it took a little while to get the bill squared away. In all, I would describe the service as choppy at best, even for Friday night prime time. I expect wait staff at a destination restaurant to embrace the menu and to express passion about the menu to patrons. Didn't get that at all. What we got was an enthusiastic, friendly and unfortunately somewhat clueless level of service.

On our way out we stopped for a couple of drinks at the bar, where our bartender Chris took care of us quite well with a fair amount of friendly knowledge. The few minutes there inspired me to turn back towards the hostess stand and express my concern with the troubles at the front of the house. Needless to say, my words were not met with extreme kindness from the borderline Napoleonic supervisor of the team up front, indicating that amateur hour was indeed upon us. Chris apologized to us on behalf of the restaurant (y'know, he really didn't have to do that but it was a nice touch) and we left it at that.

Overall, the food was quite good. However, it wasn't so life-changing enough to give a pass to service that I'd term best as sloppy and somewhat unconcerned. It's a damn shame that even a chef as seasoned and well-respected as Susur Lee can have his cuisine underwhelmed by unprepared wait staff and an utterly helpless team at the front of the house, but that's what happened. Did we enjoy the food? You bet, and that's usually what matters. That it was just short of compelling enough to overcome the service difficulties is telling for each of these elements. There's a difference between "excellent" and "enjoyable." The food came up just a wee bit shy of the "excellent" bar, but again it was very good. Was our experience at Lee memorable? Listen, any night out with my Beautiful Bride is a moment to cherish. Did Lee add to the occasion? In the words of the wankers in that old Hertz commercial, "not exactly." The service was far too much of an issue to overcome...sort of like a crappy coat of paint on an otherwise really nice room. Would we come back? Maybe.

Fantasy Baseball Early Season Nightmares, 2011 edition

Everyone has 'em. Here's mine:

Carl Crawford used to CRUSH the Red Sox

...apparently nothing has changed.

At least for now.

When Crawford signed with the Sox, I thought that the value of keeping him from facing us 18 times a year was good for at least $50 million. Keeping him from the Yankees was worth another $50 million. So really, the Sox were paying a little over $50 million for what he actually did on the field. Over 7 years, that's a little over $7 million per year for a solid defensive LF with great speed and a little bit of pop in the bat. Hey, we'll take it.

So far, CC's not been what we're looking for. It's clear from watching Sox games and what we read in the local fishwrap that the dude is pressing. Pressing wicked hard. The whole team's plate discipline has gone to nothing short of pure shit. What to do? Relax. Everyone. Relax. Let the game come to you. Don't worry about contracts, the fans, or that iffy lobster roll sticking around after lunch. Chil-lax, dudes.

Fresh-Squeezed Opening Day in Texas

Like every other Red Sox fan, I eagerly anticipated yesterday's Opening Day tilt down in Texas. Our first look at A-Gone and Carl Crawford couldn't come soon enough as we all wanted to see if this team was as good in real life as it sounded on paper..because, as Kenny Mayne from ESPN used to tell us, "games aren't played on paper...they're played inside TV sets." Lucky for me there's a TV in my office so I caught the first few innings at work before heading home. Right from the top, I could tell this would be a grinder. Why? One reason and one reason only: Home plate umpire Tim McClellan.

Now, before you dismiss this as just another rant from just another entitled Masshole Red Sox fan, hear me out: McClellan didn't cost the Sox the game yesterday. He squeezed EVERYBODY. Jon Lester clearly didn't have his best stuff, and I'm not blaming his performance on the strike zone. However, losing 3 inches on each side of the plate clearly didn't help. Lester was pissed at McClellan in the SECOND INNING because his strike zone was smaller than a 1st-grader's attention span. C. J. Wilson wasn't too pleased from the looks of it, either. He clearly didn't get a couple of calls in the first inning, and it cost him. So I have to ask: What's the point?

Listen up, Bud Selig. It's the first of April. Teams just spent 6 weeks in Florida and this is their first game in more normal game and perhaps climate conditions. Everyone's still a little rusty. Why subject them to 4 hours of torture that a thimble-sized strike zone creates? We all know that the size of the zone has an inverse relation to the pace of the game. A tight zone disrupts game flow, causes fielders to doze and results in these 4-hour AL-East style suck-a-thons full of sloppy fielding, 10-8 scores and multiple innings by the 10th, 11th and 12th pitchers on each squad. You could just about golf a full 18 holes in 4 hours. Who the hell wants to watch a baseball game that long, that sloppily-played, and in most cases, under less-than-ideal weather conditions?

The fans sure don't. Again, it's the FIRST OF APRIL. Most casual fans forget about baseball after the first NFL regular-season kickoff unless their teams are in a pennant race. It's been a good six months since they've given two shits about baseball. Tim McClellan and his anorexic strike zone sure aren't helping. There's the Final Four still going on. Both the NHL and NBA are in their stretch runs. While yocu're at it, NASCAR is a month into it season. Like no other time of the year, baseball really needs to scratch and claw for its viewing audience in early April. Keeping game pace and flow is critical to engaging the fans. So how do we fix it?

The Solution

Here's what we do, Mr. Selig. Look down the roster of every umpire and go through whatever statistical sources (such as BaseballProspectus.com) to evaluate the OBP for every MLB home plate umpire. The information's there. For the first two weeks of the season, make sure that the 10% of umps with the highest "called OBP" are allowed nowhere near home plate. I'm actually being borderline charitable here. If there wasn't that pesky little nuisance known as "collective bargaining," I'd say fire the fuckers outright, but I guess that wouldn't play too well with the National Labor Relations Board. Perhaps in the umpires' next contract negotiation MLB can work in some performance clauses to rid the game of those that continue to slow the pace of the game, making it next-nigh unwatchable. Mr. McClellan and his grandstanding ilk are literally killing baseball, and they must be stopped. In April. NOW.

10+ Covers That Don't Suck

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery. If we're lucky, the imitation is just as good or even better than the original. Look at a band such as the Grateful Dead...how many tunes did they play live that weren't their own? I vividly recall the band opening up the second set in Chicago (1994) with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was a very cool surprise.

Anyway, here are a few covers that definitely earn their keep, with original artists in parentheses. While these come to mind relatively quickly, but this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list nor is it in any order whatsoever:

1. You Really Got Me, Van Halen (The Kinks). OK, how many of you kids were in middle school and played the crap out of Van Halen's first album either on vinyl or cassette so much the inferior media of the day eventually degraded into nothing? Yup, me too. Right after Eddie's classic guitar solo "Eruption" was the charged remake of a Kinks classic.
2. Friend of the Devil, Lyle Lovett (Grateful Dead). Deadicated was probably the first of the odd "tribute album" wave back in the mid-1990s and was recorded with proceeds to benefit the rainforests or something like that, a cause to which the Dead expended great efforts. Lovett's soulful country voice is a perfect match here.
3. Pretty Woman, Van Halen. (Roy Orbison). Admit it...you like this much better than Roy's original. Especially with the "Intruder" lead-in on Diver Down, which is over half cover tunes. Probably the first Van Halen tune that got widespread airplay in my little corner of Central New York in the early 1980s.
4. Gimme Some Lovin', Grateful Dead - Pittsburgh '89 (Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve Winwood). Brent Mydland and his angst-ridden voice delivered some gems for the Dead back in his day, but this one slowly emerging out of Space is probably my favorite. Mickey and Bill's thundering drums introduce that signature wail of Brent's keyboards...and it is ON.
5. Dead Souls, Nine Inch Nails (Joy Division). From The Crow soundtrack. I heard this long before I heard the Joy Division original. OK, yeah, it's not the best thing Trent ever churned out (I enjoyed Burn from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack much more), but anything involving Nine Inch Nails and Joy Division belongs on this silly list of mine just because, dammit. Honestly, I liked NIN's version of Adam Ant's Physical (Track #98 on the Broken EP) a lot more.
6. Ain't Too Proud to Beg, The Rolling Stones (Temptations). Not the first nor the last time the Stones piggybacked off the Motown sound. This Temptations remake immediately precedes the title track on It's Only Rock 'n' Roll. Now Mick's voice sounds downright silly on occasion, but it works here with the piano and Keith's crooning bluesy guitar.
7. Never Let Me Down Again, Smashing Pumpkins (Depeche Mode). This cut led off the mid-1990s DM tribute disc Ultra. I heard it first on the radio while driving...probably on WHFS while driving on the Beltway and was a little confused, 'cause it sure as hell sounded like Billy Corgan was singing a DM tune. Indeed he was. It took a while to finally track this down in a pre-amazon.com era. Clearly the class of the disc, the Pumpkins sound is nice and trippy.
8. All Along the Watchtower, Grateful Dead-Buffalo '89 (Bob Dylan). Deep, DEEP into the second set of my first (of only four total, unfortunately) Dead show in the rain...uh, at least I think it was raining. Yeah...rain...that's it. Whatever the weather was, they nailed this one.
9. My Way, Sid Vicious (pretty sure you know damn well who did the original). Just kidding, but this disembodied, frantic mosh pit version of a classic was a fitting ending to the Good Fellas' portrayal of the spiraling load of shit that Henry Hill's life ultimately became.
10. Kerosene, Lowest of the Low (Bad Religion). The last track on the studio mini accompanying the live CD Nothing Short of a Bullet. I'm not sure if I've ever actually heard the original, but this rocks, so there ya have it. Big ups to Ron Hawkins, Stephen Stanley and the rest of the Low (didya hear? They're touring again: http://www.lowestofthelow.com/).
11. Bertha, Los Lobos (Grateful Dead). Another track from Deadicated. Really, they should have stopped tribute CDs right here. Actually, they should have wrapped up this one before its last track (see below). Los Lobos' Mexibilly sound fits like a glove for one of my Dead favorites (and the opener to the aforementioned Buffalo '89 show).
12. Overkill, Lazlo Bane (Men at Work). Just awesome. No, seriously. This is probably my favorite cover of all time. Much heavier than the irreverent poppy original. Goes at a more deliberate pace than the Men at Work version (tough not to - someone was definitely double-parked when they were laying that track down). Starts off quietly and slowly, then works its way up to a crescendo with a big-ass grungy edge...with Colin Hay topping off the last stanza. Excellent video, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOU7r4hdmw

And now let's recognize a few tunes that should never been messed with (especially in this fashion) to begin with:

• It's My Life, Gwen Stefani (Talk Talk). Admittedly, I'm not a fan of her high-pitched, incessantly-droning voice, especially when I heard "Just a Girl" about 90 times a day when it first came out. This didn't help - the tune plays directly to her weaknesses and is annoying as hell. Seriously, why did this ever happen?
• Ripple, Jane's Addiction (Grateful Dead). The first time through this disc I was intrigued to see what Perry Farrell and the crew would do with this on the last track of the CD. Needless to say, I was quickly disappointed. This was a mess. Farrell's voice doesn't belong within 1,000 miles of this tune, and the instruments were a disjointed mess.
• Sweet Child of Mine, the woman in the Black-Eyed Peas at this year's Super Bowl halftime show (Guns 'n' Roses). Slash should have stayed home. This reached untraversed proportions of suckdom, even for the annual over-produced mega-letdown know as the Super Bowl halftime show.
• Anything on Covering the Bases by Bronson Arroyo. Maybe Theo traded Bronson away for the human window fan that was Wily Mo Pena 'cause he was sick of listening to the kid consistently butcher Stone Temple Pilots riffs in the clubhouse. That would be enough reason for me.
  

Music to children's ears

Over the past couple of years we've introduced our son (now 5) to quite a bit of music. Grateful Dead, Lowest of the Low (Ron Hawkins, Stephen Stanley and their various projects as well), 1980s new wave...even some classic R&B and Funk courtesy of Sirius/XM "The Groove." Music has definitely created a stronger bond between me and my son, and I'm sure the Beautiful Bride would say the same thing (even though we have failed to convince her of the worthiness of Dead tunes, as in "C'mon, Mom...the Grateful Dead are AWESOME!"). Please, please, PLEASE don't forget to introduce your children to as much music as you can...stuff you and yours enjoy, stuff you grew up with...even what your parents liked! My mom played flute professionally back in the day, so I also have a moderate affinity towards classical music. Its calming powers (at least Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, for starters) are very underrated! Even some New Age selections do the trick as well. Hey, if what they play on XM Spa can make the trek on the upper bounds of the New Jersey Turnpike a mellow experience, I'm sold...

Clinton 2.0 d. Dukakis 2.0, 52-47

What an amazing development this past Tuesday night in our quirky little corner of the United States I sometimes refer to as the Commune of Taxachusetts.


The similarities are quite striking: In this corner, we have an almost-by-default Democratic nominee who fritters away a double-digit lead in the general election with an almost endless string of campaign gaffes. The result: A convincing defeat.

Dukakis 1.0

During the 1988 Presidential campaign, if memory serves me right (yes, I am a big fan of the original Iron Chef...but this was the first Presidential campaign I actually voted in, so my recollection may be a little hazy) Michael Dukakis didn't seem to have a huge battle in the primary. I heard Dukakis was running, heard he was nominated and didn't really hear about much else. The general election was a different story. Per my recollection, he had to fight off Willie Horton, pictures of him in a tank, and his own proclamation that Midwestern farmers should start growing Belgian endive. All the while, people were alleging that his wife Kitty wasn't exactly the most mentally stable individual on the earth (I by no means condone such muckraking, whether true or false…but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help). He exposed his stilted personality to anyone that would listen to him, while Republican nominee George Bush remained relatively in the background and watch his opponent implode.

Dukakis 2.0: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley

Fast-forward to 2009: Martha Coakley cruises through the primary relatively unscathed. In the final primary debate, her three male opponents bludgeon each other to death, but don't want to appear that they're attacking the female candidate, so she stays calm, cool and collected, waltzing through the rubble to capture the nomination and an initial 30-point lead in the early polls. This lack of battle testing would prove to be fatal to her candidacy when mixed with the stagnant cocktail of entitlement and hubris.

After all, this was Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate for almost half a century. OF COURSE the Democratic nominee was going to win. Before the primary, the SEIU radio spots read, "Tuesday's the Democratic primary, in which you'll elect the next Senator." As she took the latter part of December off from the campaign trail, her opponent worked feverishly to build his base and tap in to the over 50% of the registered Massachusetts electorate that is "unenrolled." She returned in January to see her opponent shaking hands around Fenway Park, to which she responded something to the effect of, "Well, what am I supposed to do? Stand out THERE in the COLD and SHAKE HANDS WITH PEOPLE?!"

Yes, Martha...that's EXACTLY what you're supposed to do.

She then made one giant leap towards alienation of Red Sox Nation-kind by calling Curt Schilling "another Yankee fan." But not before she proclaimed in the final TV debate that the "terrorists and Taliban in Afghanistan...they're gone." Around the time of that debate, the 30-point lead was down to the single digits. By the time she proclaimed Schill, he of the Bloody Sock, the newest member of the Evil Empire, she was in a statistical dead heat.

On the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday, Coakley tapped the star power of an incumbent President Obama for an emergency relief junket sans necktie to save her and the 60th vote for a teetering health care reform package. All this scurrying about occurred in the Coakley camp while the real relief mission continued in Haiti, with Bill Clinton at the helm...only days after Clinton also interrupted his mission in order to be Shippin’ Up to Boston to save Coakley's hide.

Coakley’s final attempts to rub elbows with the public failed to shed her rigid veneer. TV reports of her weekend visit to the Eire Pub in Dorchester showed her gingerly sipping on a Sam Adams. Anyone want to chime in on whether she finished it or not? One customer refused to shake her hand as she introduced herself. I'm not saying he represented the entire crowd, but it's not often that you see such gaffes in "reading the room" for a Democrat candidate in a Democrat town actually reported. She greeted commuters at North Station Tuesday morning, only a day after her opponent greeted Bruins fans in the same location. To me, her gestures rung hollow as a last-ditch effort to show her human side. Clearly she was in trouble.

Her Tuesday evening ended a little early when, around 9 PM, she called her opponent to concede the election. Her "drinking buddy" at the Eire, Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, explained to the disappointed crowd at Coakley headquarters and to the nation watching on TV that Coakley "was smart and understood that it wasn't about a single issue..." once again, taking the tried-and-true tack of essentially calling opposing voters stupid. Thus ends Coakley's 2010 Senate campaign, much as Dukakis' 1988 Presidential campaign ended...in the L column.


And in THIS corner, we have a little-known public servant emerging from the shadows to take on the incumbent party with a well-executed campaign and unassuming, unpretentious hard work to wring out a solid victory over an opponent that, while vulnerable, held distinct advantages in campaign infrastructure and finance.

Clinton 1.0

Now let's recall Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign. When I first heard that he could emerge from a a stacked & not-quite packed Democratic primary field, my first questions were "Who?" "Arkansas?" "You kiddin' me?" Then he went to work. He worked, he worked and he worked some more. Clinton hustled to meet and greet any voter within eye or earshot and posted a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. He kept the momentum going through his nomination and the general campaign...a campaign that bore one of my favorite political quips ever...by independent candidate Ross Perot (not-so-verbatim, but close enough for government work): "Now we have Bill Clinton here, who's the Governor of Arkansas and says he wants to run the country. Well, folks, that's like me saying I have a corner store and wanna run Wal-Mart."

Not even the ranking of Clinton's Arkansas in the high 40s and maybe even 50 proper for education on his watch, nor claims of infidelity from Gennifer Flowers (and the resulting notoriety of Stuttering John from Howard Stern show fame), slowed him down. Nor did his wife Hillary, who rubbed some the wrong way because she "could've stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but...wanted to have a career." Even questionable business deals in Arkansas, which eventually landed at least a couple of Clinton associates in the pokey, didn't stop the momentum. Bill Clinton kept working...and working. As a final gift, Clinton's opponent, incumbent President George Bush, showed up in a supermarket about a week before the election and marveled at this newfangled invention of the grocery scanner...which had been around for quite some time by then...revealing to the world what they already thought: This bloke has no clue what goes on in a supermarket. But Clinton still kept working. By early November his voice was tired, scratchy and horse. However, he'd have the rest of November, all of December and part of January to recover, for he was the President-elect.

Clinton 2.0: Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown

Pretty much the first thing I knew about Scott Brown was that he was the husband of Gail Huff, the reporter on WCVB Channel 5 in Boston's "EyeOpener," its morning news program. Gail would show up in a blizzard on Route 128, in the pouring rain by the MassPike after a toll hike or in subzero temperatures in the winter at Fenway Park while construction crews built seats atop the Green Monster...always appropriately dressed for the occasion...at 5 in the blessed AM. Now that’s dedication. Gail’s husband Scott was a Republican State Senator, which made him quite an exception in the Democratic-controlled politics of the "Commune." Admittedly, I didn't hear much about his political career at all, as the Republican Party is such a super-minority in Massachusetts government that its voice is essentially stifled and coverage is limited in the various mainstream news outlets. We were happy to hear of the success that Scott and Gail's daughter Ayla had as a contestant on "American Idol." That was pretty much it.

As the candidates from each party assembled after Ted Kennedy's death, there were rumblings that Curt Schilling himself may consider a run for the seat. These were quickly squashed by Schill himself, and Scott Brown threw his hat into the ring. More of a product of his family, he admittedly had the most name recognition of any of the Republican candidates, but in Massachusetts, that and $2.50 gets you a venti bold at Starbucks and not much else. He nabbed over 80 percent of the vote in a barely-contested primary but quickly realized that he was down 30 points against the Democratic machine with little chance to win a seat that had been held by the Kennedy family for over 50 years.

So he went to work.

Brown tirelessly worked to meet as many voters as he could. His campaign went viral in the social networking media of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Before we heard the ubiquitous "this isn't the Kennedy seat, this isn't the Democrat seat, it's the people's seat" during his final debate, we read it on Twitter. Campaign ads showed him in Southie meeting people along East Broadway, driving his ubiquitous truck and even in his own kitchen. What he lacked in star power he made up in sincerity and the sole focus on the issues concerning all citizens of Massachusetts and the nation. He was one of us: “I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I need your vote.”

His last major campaign rally on the Sunday before the election was a People's Rally in Worcester, which drew a grassroots crowd of about 2,000 in Mechanics Hall (with an overflow crowd of several hundred next door) and working-class local celebrities such as Lenny Clarke, Fred Smerlas, Steve DeOssie, Curt Schilling, Doug Flutie and John Ratzenberger of "Cheers" fame. This outpouring of genuine support created yet another favorable juxtaposition against the flat-lining Coakley campaign and Obama trotting in from the bullpen. Really, the only barely-noticeable slip-up I caught at that People's Rally was his mention that he "was probably only three years old" when Woodstock happened (actually, he would have been closer to ten). No worries, since the only thing the crowd remembered about Ratzenberger's Woodstock discussion was that he suggested any monument to the event consist of a "National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie." Flutie, an undersized Boston College quarterback that defeated the juggernaut University of Miami with his Hail Mary pass, spoke. Schilling, who had a tendon stapled in place when he mowed down the Yankees in Game Six, introduced the candidate. Brown continued to hammer away at his opponent on the issues, noting that “our tax dollars should be spent for the weapons to stop terrorists…not for the lawyers to defend them.”

On Monday's holiday, he shook hands with fans before an afternoon Bruins tilt. This was probably the highlight of any goings-on at "the Gahden" that day for many, as the Bruins were crushed by Ottawa, 5-1. Lucky for Brown, the lackluster effort by the B's wasn't contagious; he was going to play "a full sixty minutes of hockey" and work straight through to the finish.

Brown woke up on Election Day in unfamiliar territory for a Massachusetts Republican. He had the endorsement of the Boston Herald, the State Police, and the Cambridge policeman's union...the same union that listed his opponent's husband as a member. Better yet, he had a slight, albeit within the margin of error, lead in the polls. The day started with snow, which turned to a light frigid rain. After many in the media wondered how the weather would affect turnout, Brown voters came out in full force. In cities and towns carried by Scott Brown, 58 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls, while only 49 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the localities carried by Coakley. Boston residents voted at only a 43 percent clip...even after Obama was brought in to "gin up" the electorate. Springfield and Lawrence, two other cities decidedly in the Coakley camp, had even worse turnout at 32 and 28 percent, respectively. The voter turnout on each side fell in lockstep with each candidate's perceived level of effort. Brown carried the unenrolled vote at around a 2-to-1 clip. 1 in 5 registered DEMOCRATS crossed the aisle to vote for Brown. By late Tuesday evening, FoxNews was rejoicing and MSNBC was whimpering...Scott Brown had pulled off the unthinkable with a nearly-flawless campaign, and had captured the special election to fill the United States Senate seat...The People's Seat...of Massachusetts. The crowd at Park Plaza responded to Ayla Brown's news of her dad's victory with a resounding "Gas up the truck!!!"


The conventional wisdom states that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Martha Coakley and Scott Brown have most likely witnessed hundreds of campaigns during their political careers and taken valuable lessons from each of them. That Coakley unwittingly emulated Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, while Brown utilized the lessons of Bill Clinton's infinitely-more-successful 1992 Presidential campaign, is just about all anyone needs to know about the 2010 special election in Massachusetts. It's the kind of lopsided matchup you would set up in Madden football for kicks, and it played out just as you would expect it. The difference is that at the start of the game, nobody expected it.

All I wanted was some real financial news...

If you, in your hearings, have to ask, "what is proprietary trading," then it's a safe bet that you were not the most appropriate nominee to something called "The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." I'll leave it at that.

SURPRISE!!! Max Drawdown and real returns

Everyone loves to beat their benchmark. It's a huge component of portfolio managers' incentive compensation. If a US small-cap core manager beats the Russell 2000 by 1,000 basis points, you may as well drive the Lexus with the big ol' shiny red bow into his garage for his newly-licensed 16-year-old to drive...

...but what if the Russell 2000 lost 20% this year?

Truer words never spoken than this often-repeated phrase: "You can't eat relative returns."

When I was in public accounting a few years back, I asked a COO from a brokerage client of mine how the year was going. He said, halfway in jest, "we had a better year this year...we only shot off THREE toes..."

Barring extraordinary circumstances, there will be periods where money is lost. Hopefully they are very short and the losses are extremely shallow and quickly recoverable. For investments with measurable track records (most seasoned publicly-traded vehicles or benchmark indices) it's critical to me to examine the investment's maximum drawdown (alluded to in an earlier post, Deconstructing Risk and the Magic 8-Ball)...the largest drop from a previous high...to see how strong my stomach is. If you're looking at something with an annual return over time of 15 percent, it sounds great...until you realize that its max drawdown (no, not Max Headroom - that's an entirely different unfortunate occurrence) clocks in at around 50 percent. Are you willing to stomach the real possibility of a loss of half of your investment in this case? Some are, but many others aren't. As Lou Mannheim, Hal Holbrook's character in Wall Street, said (just as Bud Fox was about 30 seconds away from being carted off to jail):

Man looks into the Abyss, and there's nothin' staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character, and that's what keeps him out of the Abyss.

Gross vs. net returns

A not-so-little gnome eating away at your egg: Fees and expenses. That 15% gross return may look pretty solid, but if it's attached to 1.5% in fees and expenses, it's not quite as stellar as you think it is. $100,000 compounded at 15% annually over 10 years will leave you with a tidy $404,556. Nicely done. However, factor in the 1.5% and you're left with merely $347,809...which means that over those 10 years you've paid out $56,747 in fees. Keep this in mind. Different asset classes and different markets reward portfolio managers differently for skill. Domestic small-cap and international (especially emerging markets) vehicles tend to carry heavier fees and expenses than domestic large-cap and core fixed income products...generally because these markets are considered to be less efficient and, accordingly, greater rewards are to be gained from execution of an active investment strategy.

Inflation: An even bigger bite than we think?

Thanks to the wealth of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I'm happy to report that as of July 2008, the year-over-year change in the Producer Price Index (PPI) finished goods/commodities segment was close to 10 percent. Even as of September 2009, the year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) Health Care segment was about 3.5 percent. Sure, the core CPI (year-over-year decline of 1.29 percent as of September 2009) garners most of the headlines with the PPI well-reported but in the background. This will be the first year in a long time in which the Social Security Administration does not provide a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to pensioners. However, keep an eye out for health care costs; invariably they're rising (the minimum year-over-year change in CPI Health Care was 1.34 percent...as of August 1950). As health care and its associated costs are top of mind to many people, this is a metric worth searching out. Let's go back to over 15% and factor in not only over 1.5% fee/expense amount but our 3.5% inflation metric from health care costs, which will potentially be a significant expense when we're getting older and wanting to reap the benefits of our 15%: That $404,556 you started out with on a gross basis represented a gain of $304,556 on your initial investment. Once fees and a 3.5% inflation bite are taken out, your "real" ending value after 10 years is $243,564, for a $143,564 increase in purchasing power in constant dollars. In truth, fees and inflation have, over the course of 10 years, wiped out over half your gain.

The risk-free rate and Sharpe ratios...and inflation (again)

I like the Sharpe ratio in theory. It measures ratio of the excess return of an investment in comparison to a "risk-free" interest rate (yield on US 91-day Treasury bills is often used) over the volatility of said investment...commonly measured in terms of annualized standard deviation. Roughly and arithmetically, let's say the risk-free rate is 1 percent and we have our investment that generates a 15 percent annual return with an annualized standard deviation of 28 percent. Arithmetically we derive a Sharpe ratio of (15 - 1)/28 = 0.50. For a single-asset, long-only strategy, that may look pretty good in and of itself. However, with short-term Treasury yields well below historic norms and at a de facto rate of zero, how much do they really mean in this context? Personally, I prefer to use an "inflation-adjusted" Sharpe ratio which measures the ratio of return of an investment NET of 1) fees and 2) the GREATER of a) the risk-free rate (I tend to use the gross return on a Treasury money market fund here, since it's more readily investable for an individual investor) or b) an inflation metric of your choosing to said standard deviation. So in the case of the original investment, our back-of-the-napkin calculations would leave us with an adjusted ratio of (15 - 1 - 3.5)/28 of 0.375, which means that for every additional unit of risk, we expect generate 0.375 or 3/8 of a unit increase in purchasing power. What would we call that...the Real Sharpe ratio? The Flying Taco or Taco Loco ratio? Either way, I like it because it provides a measure of REAL compensation for risk. Certain investments fare better than others in inflationary times; this measure does well to capture such a notion.

These are a couple of concepts I touched on earlier but deserve a bit more mention in detail because of the huge potential impact to a portfolio's real purchasing power. Hopefully they can be helpful to others in evaluating investments and constructing a solid portfolio where expenses and surprises are minimized. Let's face it - I don't like surprises, unless it's my birthday, and maybe not even then. Besides, on 364 days out of the year, it's not my birthday. So let's try to make them as surprise-free as we can.

Remember what Bud Fox told his dad when it comes to investing:

There's no nobility in poverty anymore.

Red Sox Offseason: Weird Harold, Bizarro Theo?

I woke up early this morning and caught the replay of MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” program to see if there was any new off-season moves that I didn’t catch earlier in the day. What I got, instead, was Harold Reynolds about 3 days behind in the news cycle. As the other panelists, including Mitch Williams and Matt Vasgersian spoke of the pending John Lackey and Mike Cameron signings by the Red Sox, Reynolds was a little slow in catching up. He wondered aloud where that left Jason Bay in the mix, noting that “the window may be closing for Bay to sign with the Red Sox.”

Ummm…have you been paying attention, Mr. Reynolds? Bay’s agent himself said over the WEEKEND (mind you, this was a Tuesday night broadcast) that Bay was prepared to move on. Toss in an imminent signing for 2 years at $15.5 million to play the same position, and you’re STILL wondering where Bay fits in? It was funny to watch Wild Thing deadpanning his expression in letting Weird Harold (Fat Albert is one of the most underrated cartoons of the 1970s, by the way) know that he probably doesn’t. I won’t speak for anyone but odds are that Mitch was wondering at that exact moment what was in Reynolds’ coffee, and also wondering if he could get some.

The moral of the story: Peter Gammons can’t get to that desk soon enough. I tired of just about everything ESPN over the last few years so I haven’t been able to catch Gammons on TV much at all, so it’ll be good to see him on MLB Network and NESN in the coming months. Sure, he uses his Twitter account to express his political views on an unsolicited basis (@pgammo, I get it. You don’t like Sarah Palin. You live in Massachusetts. That fact alone puts the smart money, sight unseen, on you leaning a little towards the left), but there’s nothing wrong with expressing your opinion. He’ll be a great add to both sets.

Regarding the signings of Cameron and Lackey, as a Sox fan, I don’t really care for them. Unlike many, I am OK with the “bridge year” concept if it involves creating payroll flexibility. A LF manned by a platoon of Jeremy Hermida, Josh Reddick and a non-tender would work fine. Paying almost $8 million/year for TWO years for an aging outfielder seems to be a bit much for the organization. Paying $16.5 million/year for an over-30 pitcher with durability issues and a less-than-stellar record in his new home park seems steep as well. Lackey was the only solid option of the barren free agent starting pitcher class of the 2009-2010 offseason. He was the best house in a bad neighborhood, if you will, and of course he was going to be overpaid. That doesn’t mean Theo Epstein has to be the one overpaying. If I have to guess, this was more Larry Lucchino’s call in a gut reaction to keep pace with The Empire rather than the emergence of Bizarro Theo. I can’t see them keeping Josh Beckett now. Really, I couldn’t see them keeping him before this; the last two years haven’t been stellar for him; he seems to be reverting to fighting himself and trying to Nuke LaLoosh everyone with his heat. That’s not going to work now, and it sure won’t work as age and loss of velocity set in while he toils well into his 30s.

Not sure what’s going on with the Sox tripping over themselves to eat $9 of $12 million for Mike Lowell in 2010. Sure…he was defensively a shell of himself at 3B, displaying range almost as bad as a previous Sox aging infielder (Mark Loretta at 2B c. 2006). He can still hit, though. It’s well-documented that he was annoyed with the ramifications of the Sox pursuit of Mark Teixeira last year. Do his declining range and ill temper over being dangled as bait for 2 years add up to a salary dump? I guess they do. Still, Adrian Beltre is NOT the answer, unless you want to overpay a Scott Boras client for declining production and advanced age, regardless of how solid the glove is, all the while further hampering payroll flexibility. If that’s the case, be my guest…y’all just go on with your bad self. It’s much cheaper to sign a 1B or go with Kotchman and move Kevin Youkilis to 3B than to find a 3B option on the open market. I don’t really like Theo’s track record with free agent signs on the left side of the infield, either. Not since Bill Mueller, anyway.

As for Harold Reynolds, as Marty McFly said in “Back to the Future,” “watch for the changes, and try to keep up, okay?”

Chowhounds: A simple way to mix it up a little bit

If you’re like me (and on several levels, I strongly advise you to pause at least a moment to thank your personal God that you’re not), you enjoy food a great deal. That’s easy enough. For some, cooking is intuitive and easy. Me, not so much. I was blessed by having two excellent cooks for parents, but I don’t think the genes carried over too well. I am a spastic mess in the kitchen. Klutziness, sloppiness and general ill temper mark my periodic kitchen disasters. Well, at the ripe old age of “a lot more than I feel like I am,” I’m fixin’ to fix all of that. For those of you that share the same gastronome and kitchenphobe profile, here’s what we can do:

New Cookbook Sunday

OK, I know damn well that I’m not the first one to think of something like this; New [blank] Sunday concepts are just about everywhere. But screw it…give it a shot. Enjoying food in the age of information overload means that we have an infinite number of recipes at our disposal via the Internet, cookbooks assembled by an ever-increasing cast of celebrity chefs and more traditional sources indigenous to the 20th century. Maybe you have a slew of cookbooks that you’ve looked at but never really got much out of. We may have 30 or 40 such tomes on our dining room bookshelf, yet only a select few have the true mark of honor – pages that are waterlogged or crusty from ingredients and other friendly fire from use of a few select recipes repeatedly. Let’s tap a different one of these once a week to strengthen our chops and rid us of the kitchen anxiety, no? Every week, reach for a cookbook or similar source that you think has been relatively untapped. Pick out a recipe you’re at least a little comfortable with, discuss with your Beautiful Bride or other significant other, shop for the ingredients and let it rip. Start off slow – I picked out a wicked easy shrimp dish myself – but who cares…we all learned the basics on how to ski on the bunny hill, didn’t we? Next week I’ll go for something a little more challenging. While you’re at it, try working out pairings of wine and/or beer with each of your dishes to complete the experience. You can always spend an extra 15-30 minutes in the gym on Monday to work off your newfound culinary success. Good luck and enjoy!

Memo to Dick Jauron from the days of common sense

Dick:

Sure...Leodis McKelvin decided to fight momentum and come out of the end zone. Twice. Once with a tide-changing fumble and again with a time-wasting saunter to the 21 when Standing Hampton would keep you at the 20 with a few extra seconds. Bad. Wicked bad. But Leodis isn't the no-talent-ass-clown that called the D that allowed the Best of the Best to saunter down the field to knock your nostalgic lead from 11 to 5. It's all on you, Yale boy. Your team hit all game and all of a sudden you turn turtle and play prevent. Is this what Ralph's paying for? Crash Davis says, "don't think...it can only hurt the ball club...

It's bottling day for Flying Taco BrewVentures!

While I contemplate the waning of my latest momentum trade in the 3rd month of the quarter (it's still actually doing well; just not as well as it was a couple of weeks ago), I'm finally getting around to bottling a Saison that I have anticipated since the Beautiful Bride bought me the homebrew setup for the holidays. The latest Flying Taco BrewVentures creation has a working title of "Rye Not? 'Tis the Saison" or a recent title of "Saison du Beavis," in honor of our 15-year old cat Beavis who was found cozying up next to the brew barrel during the final days of dry-hopping. It's definitely not been the same for Beavis since we had to say goodbye to his closest companion Butt-Head right before the new year; hell, they've basically been partners in crime since birth. But Beavis soldiers on...and I digress...

I was supposed to brew this deal in June. But Saison yeast requires higher fermentation temperatures, and anyone familiar with Boston weather patterns this summer remembers that we basically got shafted out of the first 6 weeks of summer. Additionally, we had a kitchen project and a few other things pushing the schedule back, so I finally had a chance to brew on July 16. In addition to using the lightest extract I could find (hey, after all it's only my 4th batch), I steeped some Belgian Pale and Pils and about a pound of Rye malt. Toss in some candied ginger, a bunch of candi sugar and a little coriander with Styrian Goldings and Saaz hops and away we go. In addition to needing higher temperatures, Saison yeast also has a habit of setting the world on fire early and petering out for a while before it finishes the job. This was the case with my batch; with an original gravity of 1.062 it worked down to 1.020 but needed a fair amount of time in August to get down to 1.006; of course, cooler temperatures in the back end of July didn't help. It wasn't cold enough to safely put a BrewBelt on the fermenter but wasn't warm enough for the yeast to clear out the remaining fermentables. So I let it take its sweet time and when we hit below 1.010 I dry-hopped with a little Saaz and Styrian Goldings. And now is the fateful day, a day to rejoice, taste the final sample before bottling, and be exceptionally stoked about the project. Right?

Not exactly.

Bottling day is all of that. But from a tactical perspective, bottling day sucks. Royally. For a homebrewer, bottling day is chock full of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, sanitizing, sanitizing, sanitizing and a whole bunch of stuff that can easily go wrong (not enough bottles, caps or cleansing equipment; broken cappers, broken bottles, earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts, "it wasn't my fault I SWEAR TO GOD!!!"). Two quotes come to mind that are extremely relevant to a homebrewer when thinking about bottling:

• On football when the forward pass was a new, exciting and somewhat scary wrinkle to the "three yards and a cloud of dust" game of yore: "three things can happen when you put the ball in the air, and two of them are bad."

• On golf from the neighbor of the real Beavis & Butt-head, the immortal Tom Anderson, after our two favorite unruly teenagers spent the afternoon following him around the course and bogarting all his golf balls: "Boy, I tell ya what, Dusty...I felt like a one-legged cat tryin' to bury turds on a frozen pond out there today."

It's all that and a bag of chips. Bottling day is like being a flaky art student who just got cut off from the 'rents cash flow and has to balance the checkbook after a 2-week jaunt to Europe. Kicking the tires on a job requiring project management skills? Developing and implementing a homebrew calendar for a year requires both project management and organizational skills...not to mention significant attention to detail. If you do it right, it goes something like this:

1. Soak bottles in water and cleansing (I use PBW = Professional Brewers' Wash) solution
2. Soak bottling bucket and equipment (hydrometer, beer thief, auto siphon, racking cane, tubing) in water and PBW solution
3. Rinse bottles
4. Wash bottling tree
5. Wash bottling spigot
6. Rinse bottling bucket, equipment and spigot
7. Sanitize bottling bucket and equipment
8. Sanitize and rinse bottling tree
9. Sanitize and rinse bottles
10. Sanitize and rinse pan for priming solution (the priming solution of water and sugar gives the remaining yeast just enough to feed on in the bottle to generate natural carbonation)
11. Sanitize caps
12. Prepare priming solution
13. Cool priming solution
14. Sanitize bottling spigot
15. Rinse bottling bucket, equipment and spigot
16. Prepare bottling bucket and auto siphon
17. Pour priming solution into bottling bucket
18. Take final gravity measurement of beer and sample for taste
19. Siphon beer from fermenter/carboy into bottling bucket
20. Bottle and cap
21. Optional per Bluto: "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."

OK, it's a little more than a 12-step plan but a little less than Kerry Healey's mystical 50-point plan she noted during her unsuccessful bid to become Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (leaving us with Deval Patrick, who has less soul and personality than Tiger Woods. We won't even discuss the comparison of efficacy in each of their chosen crafts/professions).

Invariably, something goes wrong. I have brewed and bottled a whopping four...count 'em...four...batches on my own this year and can name something from each batch in which I screwed the proverbial pooch. No need to bore you with the details, but prepare yourself. Have at least 24 bombers on hand (22 oz. or 650 ml bottles) and at least a 6-pack of typical 12 oz. bottles. Make sure the labels are off before Bottling Day, because not a lot is more annoying than scouring glue-y labels off bottles when you're supposed to be filling them with your luscious creation. Cleanliness and sanitation are critical to keeping unruly microscopic critters from tainting your finely-crafted beverage. Another useless metaphor: If homebrewing is a football field, then bottling is a First-and-Goal situation from the 9-yard line...those last nine yards are the most important, so they can be the toughest to get. Accordingly, they require a great deal of strength, brute force and a tremendously plodding work ethic. This, my friends...is Bottling Day. Don't fret, though...in two to three weeks you'll pop the cap on your latest (and now carbonated) elixir and enjoy it with family and friends...just like you thought when you started this crazy hobby of yours. As always, enjoy!

Consumer Products Analysis, Volume 1

Here's my review of diet Ultraviolet Mountain Dew:

It really sucks.

Even worse than Ma Kelly said about the Lower East Side in "Johnny Dangerously."