Well This Is Just About The Best Story Ever

I can't guarantee that this story is true, but I CAN guarantee that it is awesome. In Stuttgart, Germany, a sterile man paid his neighbor, a father of two, $2,500 to impregnate his wife, a former beauty queen. For 3 nights a week for the next 6 months, (72 times for you kids counting at home), the neighbor tried to get this woman pregnant. Eventually the husband forced his neighbor to see the doctor, who determined the neighbor was sterile as well.

But how could he be sterile - didn't he have two children? This led to the neighbor's wife confessing that he was not the father of their two kids. I guess you win some, you lose some. If you get paid to have sex with your neighbor's hot wife 72 times, you should probably figure something horrendous is coming your way.

This story is too good to be true, but then again, so are deep-fried empanadas. So maybe it's true. "Full" details at the link below.

http://www.global-report.com/perth/?l=en&a=347624

ETA: Oh yeah, and now the guy who was paid to make a baby is being sued for breach of contract. But his defense is that he tried his best. Well played, sir, well played.

OH FUCK YEAH

Friday Night Lights has just been renewed for an additional two seasons, at 13 episodes apiece, extending this year's arrangement with DirecTV. To all the Friday Night Lights fans out there, this is a glorious day. (Sara's fairly visceral reaction to the news became the title of this blog post.)

For those of you who refused to ever watch despite the repeated urgings of your cherished friends (namely me), you can go screw yourselves. Turns out we didn't need you anyways.

Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can't lose.

Ridiculous Pricing: Marc Jacobs

Out of curiosity, several months ago I signed up for clothing sale notifications from Gilt Groupe, an online "sample sale" reseller for high-end luxury brands. The enterprising ladies who started the business were smart enough to know that adding a completely unnecessary "e" to the end of the word "Group" would hold great appeal for their targeted customer base. It's also "invitation-only", so Balenciaga won't have to endure the massive humiliation of seeing their products show up on a Google Shopping search, but anyone can get "invited".

I never buy anything from sales on this site, but I sometimes log in to the sales, because it's just funny to see 1) what some of these items cost and 2) what apparently qualifies as a luxury good. In a new recurring feature on this blog, I'm going to post pictures of items, and their original retail and sale prices. Trust me, you're going to enjoy this. Today's items courtesy of Marc Jacobs.


Have you ever thought to yourself, "man, I have way too many shirts. I want to have fewer shirts, but I can't decide which ones to get rid of"? If so, Marc Jacobs has an elegant, sophisticated solution - cut two of your shirts in half, poorly, and then stitch the non-matching halves together to make only one shirt! It's brilliant, you retain the essence of both of your favorite shirts while simultaneously freeing up closet space. But now you're probably thinking, "who has the time to do all that cutting and sewing?" Well Marc Jacobs has thought of that too - he already did it for you! And he'll give you back the remnants of your old shirts for only $198.00 on Gilt Groupe. (You're not going to believe the original retail price on this "shirt" - it was $950.00. The notion that people were spending $950.00 to buy this shirt makes me feel like we deserve to be in a massive economic depression.)

I know what you're thinking - you're thinking "wow, that is an awesome shirt". And you're right. Because it's a shirt, which, in itself, is already great. It provides warmth for your upper body and allows you entry into places that require wearing a shirt. Second, it has an apple on it, and apples are both delicious and nutritious. Third, the apple is open, so you can see the core, which symbolizes others being able to see your core when they see you with this shirt on. And chicks dig symbolism. All this awesomeness can be yours for $78.00, which is the Marc Jacobs bargain of a lifetime. Even its original retail price of $330.00 was, to be honest, already the bargain of a lifetime. Are you still not sold? Oh I see, you're concerned there might be something lame and stupid on the back. Let me assure you, that is not at all the case.

See? Bargain of a lifetime at $78.00 before tax and shipping. I think the shirt is even 100% cotton!

The Latest From Michael Lewis

My favorite writer is probably Michael Lewis, a man whose life I recently realized I was inadvertently copying. He went to Princeton, I went to Princeton. He studied economics, I studied economics. He worked for Salomon Brothers, I worked for Citigroup. His interests seem to be writing, sports, business and technology. So we also have the same interests. Really the only difference is that he has numerous bestselling books whereas I possess an alarmingly detailed knowledge of America’s Best Dance Crew. But surely the bestselling books are in my future. Hopefully I won’t have to write them myself, someone can just interview me for a couple hours and then ghostwrite for me.

All of this is just a roundabout introduction for my extremely enthusiastic recommendation of Lewis’ latest piece in Vanity Fair, entitled “Wall Street on the Tundra”. It’s a terrific examination of what led to Iceland, a quirky fishing and aluminum smelting community, into its ridiculous bankruptcy. Lewis hears small bombs go off in the streets during the middle of the night – he eventually learns people are bombing their own Range Rovers for the insurance money. With the nonsensical rise of the Icelandic financial system, Iceland’s krona was rising at 16% per year, so everyone in Iceland took out car loans and mortgages in yen, which was only rising 3% per year.

It must have seemed like a no-brainer: buy these ever more valuable houses and cars with money you are, in effect, paid to borrow. But, in October, after the krona collapsed, the yen and Swiss francs they must repay are many times more expensive. Now many Icelanders—especially young Icelanders—own $500,000 houses with $1.5 million mortgages, and $35,000 Range Rovers with $100,000 in loans against them. To the Range Rover problem there are two immediate solutions. One is to put it on a boat, ship it to Europe, and try to sell it for a currency that still has value. The other is set it on fire and collect the insurance: Boom!

I would say it’s unbelievable, except that I believe it completely. So how did this all happen, financially speaking?

I spoke with a hedge fund in New York that, in late 2006, spotted what it took to be an easy mark: a weak Scandinavian bank getting weaker. It established a short position, and then, out of nowhere, came Kaupthing to take a 10 percent stake in this soon-to-be defunct enterprise—driving up the share price to absurd levels. I spoke to another hedge fund in London so perplexed by the many bad LBOs Icelandic banks were financing that it hired private investigators to figure out what was going on in the Icelandic financial system. The investigators produced a chart detailing a byzantine web of interlinked entities that boiled down to this: A handful of guys in Iceland, who had no experience of finance, were taking out tens of billions of dollars in short-term loans from abroad. They were then re-lending this money to themselves and their friends to buy assets—the banks, soccer teams, etc. Since the entire world’s assets were rising—thanks in part to people like these Icelandic lunatics paying crazy prices for them—they appeared to be making money. Yet another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.

Even more interesting than the finance is the cultural element to all this. Enough from me, read the whole piece here. I promise it’s worth the time. While you do that, I’ll be off writing my first bestseller. Or watching an episode of “Burn Notice”. It’s tough to say which.

Dance Movies

The best part of any dance movie is when the whole cast is in a club or party, and everyone breaks out into a spontaneous and improvised, yet perfectly choreographed group routine where everyone knows all the moves.

The reason I enjoy this part so much is because it always happens to me when I go out.

Bizkit The Sleepwalking Dog

This makes me wish I had a dog...

Asian Adventures, Vol. IV

Been a while since I shared some secret information about Asian people. Here’s something you may not know – many Asian people, particularly parents, are loathe to remove the protective plastic film that comes on handheld electronics, like a camera, cell phone, or iPod (hat tip to Katie on this). Asians have been known to leave the sticky plastic sheet on their gadgets as long as humanly possible, even though the manufacturer really intends for them to remove it immediately. Many times, this protective plastic film becomes unbearably dirty or frayed, causing outsiders to ask said Asian why he or she still has the plastic film on. Popular responses include: “Why would I take it off?”, “So I don’t get it all scratched up” or my personal favorite, “I like the feeling you get when you eventually do take the plastic off – it’s like you have a brand new iPod!”. You might be thinking “that’s so stupid”. In response, I would say, “your face is stupid! OHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”. Then I would run/jump around you in a circle, barking like DMX and triumphantly celebrate my complete verbal domination of you. Look at you. You’re pathetic.

Shocking News: Quick Follow Up

People, listen up - you definitely know someone who could commit a murder. Let's be realistic here.

Shocking News

I was recently informed of some fairly incredible news - a girl I went to Princeton with (graduated a year ahead of me, but I didn’t know her) apparently went on to become a porn star. “Star” is probably a misnomer, I’m sure she’s not famous or anything, so just think of it as “porn actress”. Even though I didn’t know this girl, I nonetheless found the story mind-blowing. I definitely reacted with a bigger “wow” to this news than any other high school or college classmate news I’d ever heard.

This got me to thinking - what could I hear about a former classmate that would be more shocking than finding out he or she did porn? I gave it a good 10-15 minutes of thought, and here is the list of “eventual classmate outcomes” that I came up with:

1. Became a terrorist.
2. Became the leader/messiah of a substantial cult (over 20 people) that ultimately involved death.
3. Switched genders.
4. I couldn’t think of anything else that would be more shocking than porn.

Even hearing that someone committed murder would be less shocking. Let’s be honest here – we all went to school with someone who conceivably could kill another person. Doesn’t mean we thought it was really going to happen, but it was within the scope of plausibility. I’m sure you know someone who, given specific environmental conditions, you believe has a greater than 1% chance to commit a homicide. You’re just a little leery around that person, right? This person has no reason whatsoever to kill you, and yet…you’re careful. Better safe than sorry.

As an aside on the murder thing, after the Columbine tragedy, I wondered, “if that happened at my school, who would it be?” I started making a mental list of plausible candidates, and let’s just say that list was way too long for my liking. Once the list got to eight or nine, I started reversing course. “No…that’s ridiculous, Eric, he could never kill a dozen people…uh…right?” The whole mental exercise was both spooky and depressing.

Terrorist is, suffice it to say, a pretty big deal - I actually can’t envision a single person I’ve ever met going down that path, so, I mean, yay for that. Same for the cult leader thing, although I can sort of imagine someone leading an innocuous cult for a little while. There was supposedly a small cult at Princeton a few years before I got there, but nobody died.

Transgender was a tough one to rank on the list – surely hearing that kind of news would elicit a huge “wow!” from me. At the same time though, my instinct is that there are more transgender people in the world than there are porn stars. I don’t really have any statistical evidence to support that claim, but I somehow intuitively feel this is correct. This might stem from the fact that I have met at least two transgender people (I suppose you never truly know how many transgender people you’ve met), but zero porn stars (I guess the same inconclusive comment holds here too). I used to work in the same building as a 6’4” man-turned-woman who was fond of wearing giant frilly pink dresses. It was a giant wall of pink. Dude/non-dude did get her own bathroom though. That was a good perk. Anyways, despite the “numbers”, I ultimately think switching genders would shock me more than porn.

If somebody became a con man/white collar criminal, it would need to be on an epic Bernie Madoff type scale to outweigh porn star, I’d say. Drug dealer, bank robber – those things just don’t quite measure up unless we’re talking about Pablo Escobar or Bonnie and Clyde level stuff. Let me know in the comments if you think I missed anything of if you would have a different list. In the meantime, I’ll worry about how my Google AdSense banner ad is going to change in light of some keywords in this post.