Why I Shouldn't Talk to People at Parties

I talked to a guy at a party last night. He reminded me of Jim Cramer from CNBC’s Mad Money, only shorter enough to make me think he was a 7/8th size version of Jim Cramer. I like Jim Cramer a lot, so it was mildly exciting for me to see someone who was almost famous in a slightly reduced size. The real Jim Cramer would have given me advice about what stocks (or equities as the grown-ups say) to sell. Sell, sell, sell! Buy, buy, buy!

However, since this guy wasn’t even a full-size version of Jim Cramer, I had to make conversation, which I don’t really enjoy.
“So what do you do?” he asked.
“Nothing really,” I elucidated.
“What, you’re retired?”

Actually, I’m 45, so even if I’d started work at age 12, that would be a little ambitious. No, I just don’t do anything, was my reply.

I felt like I held the upper hand in this conversation because in this town, if you don’t perform an alpha job, it’s like saying you’re a serial killer. My sense of being a high ranking serial killer was reinforced when I asked him what he did. I could tell he was dying to tell me.

“I work in mergers and acquisitions,” he proudly told me.
“What sort of companies? High tech?,” I played ball.
“Health care, WebMD.”
“Oh, didn’t the guy from Netscape originally set that up or something?” I considerately played along.
“No, no. I would have known that. It’s nothing to do with Jim Clark.”
“Really? I remember reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis, and I’m pretty sure it’s all about Jim Clark getting into online health records.”
“No, it can’t be.”

At this point, since I know I’m right and the guy isn’t Jim Cramer, I pull out my iPhone and show the fake Jim Cramer that I’m right.

That’s why I’m not good at cocktail conversation.

Hello 2010, It's 2013

I just read my last post from 2010 and decided to crank up the keyboard and get in action. As you can see from the handy-dandy automatic date stamp, it's fast forward to 2013. And as it's January, I'm still basking in the pretense of new year's resolve.

This town's been all atwitter about two things lately . . . the Redskins finally winning (or at least losing less) and the Fiscal Cliff Disaster. As I've only got a few minutes, I'll cut to the chase, and explain that my particular fascination with all things tax deductible has been focused on Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

As the cliff came inching closer, it seemed Boehner became increasingly orange . . . I was taken aback watching him on CNN - clearly while Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden were scrambling to avert a taxathon on January 1, 2013, Boehner had enough time on his hands to hit the tanning salon:

. . . either that, or he's been dipping into whatever shellac Nancy Pelosi uses on her hair. On the flip side, Mitch McConnell was growing ever more like his nemesis Harry Reid:

Sometimes it makes me wonder if all we need for bipartisan cooperation in Washington is a new stylist mixed with a little love from RG3. Go 'skins!

Fountain of Spoof

So I'm feeling old and dried up like a prune. Partly it's my own fault for spending time at the pool, the summer nesting spot of teenagers looking nubile and a little bit pimply.

During the course of the rest of the year, I barely come in contact with teens: I have no idea what they do or where they live September to May. I guess they spend a lot of time at Abercrombie & Fitch or at the movie theater, either watching vampire flicks (girls) or action-thriller-fart films (boys). I''m assuming they also go to school and have part-time jobs in shops I can never afford to shop at.

Obviously I was a teenager at one time, in a proterozoic period in a distant galaxy, before the invention of cell phones. Talking of which, according to a recent study, if I want to be more like a teen, I shouldn't be using my phone for voice calls; instead, I should be pounding the teensy keys like a texting automaton, preferably blindfolded.

In an effort to avoid the onslaught of middle age, I've identified several changes I can make to my life to give me the appearance of being young and vibrant:

1. Drink Arnold Palmer Half and Half Iced Tea: don't mistake this for a lesser Red Bull - this 23 oz of iced tea/lemonade is like an elixir of youth, or at least I think so. Teen girls in the know knock this back like it's crack cocaine.

2. Slather up with Proactiv: yup, if I use products for spotty teenage skin, I can transform my increasingly creased dermis into skin like a spotty teenager. Again, fountain of youth stuff, right?

3. Refuse to watch anything on television. Screw the cinema-screen-surround-sound-home-theater experience, that's for oldsters. From now on, I'm only gonna watch viral videos on my blinged-out cellie.

4. Talk in Lady Gaga lyrics. I swear, I recently overheard a young buck at the snack bar chatting to the lady behind the counter using only Ke$ha and Lady Gaga songs. I am not joking about this. Snack bar chick replied in monosyllables, so I couldn't be sure if she was quoting Timbaland or just stupid.

5. stop using punctuation and capital letters thats just for people born before the internet and im all about social networking so there

6. Supersize my Facebook friends list. See 5 above for fuller explanation. It's actually better to know more people through Facebook than to actually, well, know those people in real life.

7. Wear Silly Bandz in an ironic way.

8. Buy a twin bed and pretend I live at home with my parents. I'll even make my husband pretend he's my boyfriend and have him sneak in the house to share my bed. He'll have to leave early in the morning before my "parents" catch him. As a trainee teenager, I know that I'll have to adjust my definition of "early morning" to mean around 10 AM.


That's my shortlist for now. If all goes well, I'll be starting twelfth grade in a week or two and I'll find out what teens do in the winter months.

The Drive from Planet OBX

Each summer, I've felt inadequate when people ask what we're doing and it doesn't involve the Outer Banks. For some reason, around the nation's capital, there are two socially acceptable places to go to the beach: the Cape and North Carolina.

I'll state for the record that people who vacay on the Cape, don't mean the one in South Africa; instead, they're referring to the area around Cape Cod, including Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and another less fancy island that I forget the name of for now. A stint on the Cape involves a lot of money (usually old, but new hedge fund wealth is accepted in these recessionary times), extended family named "Preston" and "Buffy" and madras pants, none of which I'm in possession of.

Anyway, moving down the social scale a few notches, the Outer Banks is the other check box on the beach-bound survey of summer. This summer, the family and I packed a bathing suit and an iPod and headed south of the border to the Outer Banks.

To be fair, North Carolina is perfectly nice. There's nothing dreadful about it - beaches are sandy, skies are generally blue, rental houses are decorated in lighthouse and shell motifs . . . it's the journey that's the problem. Starting at the Virginia/North Carolina border, traffic trickled like molasses to its destination. It took several hours to reach the bridge optimistically linking the Outer Banks with the North Carolina mainland. Driving - and I use that word loosely because it implies speed - up Route 12 to Duck, a jogger in 90 degree heat overtook us. The only solace I could find in this slow-moving, single lane pilgrimage was that it perfectly replicated the Hamptons in summer experience, but at half the price.

According to the Wright Brothers Memorial, it took Orville and Wilbur nine days to travel from Dayton, OH to Kitty Hawk - they had a plane to haul and no Wright Brothers Memorial Bridge to travel across - but I'm sure it seemed quicker than my journey last week.

The Day the Earth Shuddered

Back at the pool again today, this time with only the senior water aerobics workout to keep me company. Those ladies sure do know how to cover up their torsos.

For those unaccustomed to water aerobics, it mainly involves bouncing up and down in the water while the instructor plays bad eighties music and leads the group. Aside from the bouncing, there's really not much more to it aside from a few arm movements and the occasional leg kick. We're not talking an Olympic sport here.

All was fine and dandy and I was keeping snippy comments to myself until time for the "dry land" portion of class. Well, let me tell you, those ladies might look trim from the clavicle up, but everything below is a little gelatinous. I backed away, determined not to look back, but a sudden burst of Bruce Springsteen and I whipped around, only to see the ladies doing sit ups with their legs straight up in the air.

I was treated to a vision of water aerobics seniors from the undercarriage side. It's a bit like the ocean floor - not something that sees the light of day and definitely not for the faint of heart. I raced off, ready to throw myself at the mercy of a Diet Coke and Nutty Buddy.

More Itching than a Bikini Filled with Ants

After slouching off for a few months, I'm back - and in a bikini. Before you shriek in horror (well, go ahead), I should add that it's July and the pool's open. Since I'm at my watery gulag from dawn 'til chlorine clouds my contacts, I've had plenty of time to observe the teen generation and I'm here to report on my findings, gonzo style.

First, it seems that we are in the midst of a severe fabric shortage. The teen girls at the pool have been reduced to wearing triangles held together with string, so when they shimmy down the steps to the pool area, it's like watching a puppy prizefight in a handkerchief.

But the good news is that the girl teens do not need to get their swimsuits wet. Apparently, string bikinis are exclusively worn when hanging out at the snack bar, sipping bottled water, or when sunbathing on loungers, far, far from the splash of the pool.

There's an exception to this sartorial axiom: when freshly graduated senior boys show up to play water polo, teen girls hit the water, faster than a BP oil spill. I snarkily observed this phenomenon the other day - the teen bikini chicks had been prostrate on the loungers like sun-dried tomatoes for several hours with only their cell phones for shade, when the boy posse shows up, their board shorts stuffed full of testosterone.

No sooner had the board shorts jumped in the pool, than the girls suddenly realized there was a pleasant pool filled with water 30 feet away. Wow! And did that game of water polo look fun!

Naturally, lots of splashing occurred. Fun, eh? I soon noticed that the girls were clustered around one guy - the best player, perhaps? - wearing Aviators and spiking up his hair between plays. Not long after I noticed, his Lady Gaga girlfriend noticed. She idles over, installs herself on the side near the goal and emits laser beam death rays in the general area of the water polo game.

At that point, I had to leave. There was a snack bar emergency and I needed to swallow a Diet Coke and ice cream, but later, I saw Aviator boy and Lady Gaga drive off from the pool in a Much Better Car Than Mine. It was just like "Thelma and Louise."

I don't quite know what happened to the teen bikini chicks, but I'll be sure to report back. I've got many more pool days before the final curtain comes down on Fun at the Pool, Redux.

Boy, that was a really short iPad focus group

I'm not going to pretend to review the non-existent iPad that I'm holding, but I have to register my surprise at Apple's naming faux pas. Seriously, did they not conduct any focus group testing? Perhaps there are no women who work at Apple?

If you did a quickfire word association game in a roomful of women between the ages of 18 and 50, you'd find out pretty soon that the iPad is a feminine hygiene product with a touch screen. I'm not the first to point this out . . . yesterday, iTampax was a Twittering trending topic, plus there's already a plethora of jokes and spoof ads online at Apple's expense.

I just finished reading David Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man" and a point he discussed is particularly apt in this instance:

"Perhaps the most important operation agencies are ever called upon to perform is to prepare a campaign for a new product which (sic) has not yet emerged from the laboratory. . .
. . . As I write I am engaged in just such an operation. It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. . .
. . . It they would just invest half as much in the creative work of launching new products as they invest in the technical work of developing them, they would see fewer of their conceptions abort."

This kind of reminds me of the Chevy Nova (in Spanish = doesn't go) and the Ford Penis, I mean Pinto, (in Brazilian Portuguese slang = small penis) . . . but at least these names worked in one culture. The trouble with the iPad is that it fails at the first hurdle. Will it be an iFlop?