See the empty shell of a condo? This is the other “ghost” condo that has been years in the building near downtown Hollywood. I’ve been prompted to explain “pre-construction” sales. Easy, these condos are not fully financed by the backers. Instead, they prey upon people with down payments. The scam is you put up 10% of the purchase price, of say $200,000. When the condo is built, they say, it will be worth $300,000 and you can flip a quick profit.
Well, it has been years and the thing is still sitting there unoccupied. I’ve included a second picture to show the type of building they tear down to create these “new” buildings. This is the old Hollywood Plaza Hotel. “I’m truly amazed since things have been made, how little has changed in the building trade.”I had just made the daily deposit when a strange lady ran up to me
and demanding to use my phone. There was no emergency so I declined. Good move. She was some nutcase claiming this man was hitting on her, except, it was not a man, it was a very masculine woman. Even I had to look twice. I stuck around just long enough to hear the other woman call the police and report a “crazy lady was following her around calling her a lesbian”. What’s the bets they know each other? Either way, never, never get involved in any dispute which involves sex and policemen.
At the shop, I reopened the files on the business cards. They had not been updated since September 16, 2006. Time flies. I had been learning CSS, which I gave up when I found out how little it paid. I rather like that because it reflects yet another area of the Internet that has finally moved toward the advantage of idea people rather than high-priced help. Just say I’ve had one too many code jockeys demand to know what the code was going to be used for, as if it was any of their business. A lot of work was done, and will have to be redone. For ease of maintenance, it is back to a table format and to hell with people who have strange monitors and browsers. I need six hundred cards, and I’ve got to create a filing system to track every one of them. For that is the real money-maker; the data behind the cards. The good news is such undertakings are 150% brain-work and so I can do it anytime, anywhere. Like in the coffeeshop tonight.
I had just gotten in the door when Maria, of the Johnson Twins, called. She got held up at a job interview last Wednesday. Okay, and since she called, I’ll go easy on that one. We have a meet scheduled for 7:00 PM next Monday. Let’s see if she thinks to bring her microphone.
I concluded later that a database will be needed to keep track of the business cards. There is no pattern to the information that is consistent, some cards are sparse where others are crammed with information. The only consistency is that to date, most of them contain a phone number, but alas, that phone number is not always unique. It is a start, and I hope I have not forgotten how I did the scans, for I’ve got a huge backlog.
Taking a break time to time, I thumbed through “Jackie O”, and find her life story dull and predictable. She was the Leona Helmsly of her day and probably never answered a phone for herself, one of a totally weird set of quirks that pass for class in this country. Yes, she was a fashion leader, but it cost her $16,000 a year to be so. Yes, she even redecorated the White House without ever having lifted a paintbrush. What I am finding far more fascinating is the tale of Aristotle Onassis.
Now there was a sumbitch, that Aristotle Onassis. The book does not give the background, but notes that he always seemed to be around when rich younger women were having crises in their lives and marriages. I recall the yacht he owned, the Cristina, from articles I read years ago. I did not know he pioneered the “off-shore” registry, whereby his ships are subject to almost non-existent Panamanian taxes (and safety standards). I do note, however, that he had the classic rich man problem of finding a wife his own age or reasonably close.
It seems all rich men, at some point, become intensely worried about having a heir. I can allay all their fears by assuring them, as soon as they croak, their fortunes will be squandered within a lifetime. They still like to try, so they run into the same barrier I did long ago – all the really good women are gone by the age of around 22. (This is a figure of speech, I know lots of excellent women over that age. I just wouldn’t hit on them in a bar.) If billionaires can’t find good leftovers, what chance do mere mortals have?
Unlike these billionaires, I would have no qualms about dating a woman thirty years younger than myself. No trouble with that whatsoever. I guess, though, that one thing leads to another and most billionaires wind up chasing other men’s exes with astonishing regularity. A form of social justice lies in there somewhere, I am certain, or at least proof you can buy what you can’t get any other way. I like my hay before it has been through the cow.
The book is half-read, but the dominating figure is already Aristotle, although Jackie is still married to Kennedy by chapter seven. Kennedy did not make his own money and the difference between the two men is already becoming clear. Kennedy had to please everyone. Aristotle was probably the better man. But the events assure you that if you think decent women are rare at street level, matters are far worse at the top.
I finally discovered what autonomous spending was. Reading my old economics text, it is the effect when people who have wealth experience a growth in value, say their holdings go up a million. They will tend to spend more of their income. Wealth is a stockpile, income is a flow. Since our economy is geared toward the measurement and taxation of income, not wealth, the cause for this spending is not measured, hence, is autonomous.
It is now 8:30 AM, and I’m heading over to JP’s. He wants to see that movie, “300”, which has some mixed reviews. Unfortunately, he had partied to 6:00 AM and was barely alive when I got there. So today’s journal gets super-sized. We finally got over to Kendall Plaza to discover, after parking the car and wading through the huge lineup, that the movie listing was a misprint. This, of course, was a lie because the Internet was designed to prevent this kind of “misprint”. The fact is, they were too cheap to pay to change the file, and of course, since you are there now. Screw them, we left.
Besides, it was $9.50 per person, and I felt we could do far better for the money. We did, I chose two DVDs off the shelf that turned out to be excellent. “The Last King of Scotland”, an excellently entertaining pseudo-documentary about Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator who was deposed in 1979. I did not know he was an admirer of anything Scottish, and fancied himself the title because he hated the English. (He wanted the Scots to throw off the English yoke as he did.) I did know he was trained in the KAR (King’s African Rifles), and that his insanity grew with time.
The story concerns a Scot doctor who wanted to make a difference, and wound up as Amin’s personal physician. He was blind to much of the terror but eventually got caught in it, finally escaping during the incident at Entebbe. I have no idea if the tale was based on any real doctor, but the movie is Academy Award material all the way. Beware of a particularly gruesome scene when the doctor gets one of Amin’s wives pregnant.The second movie was also excellent, if lengthy. We stopped half-way and went to JZ’s dad’s place for a visit. Dad is still extremely weak and we only visited for an hour. Everyone is planning a get-together at Ocean Reef in a couple of weeks, I think I’ll make it a point to spend at least one day there this year. By pure coincidence, I found the pictures I took four years ago when we went snorkeling along the reef with all those women.
We managed time to grab a meal of chicken and rice at Pollo Tropical, making maybe the second time in my life I’ve been there. I just don’t go out to restaurants that cook the same thing the same way I do at home. It was great food, however. There was also a sixty plus waitress that would bug your eyes out. JP sure took a liking to her. I must say, “Wow!”
Ah, right, the second movie. It was in two parts, each nearly two hours long. It was also a strong contender. The plot was an amalgamation of real escapes from various German POW camps during WWII. I recognized several of the classics, a such as the man who imitated the Stalag electrician (although the real attempt must have failed as I once saw pictures of both men). Normally I don’t care for wartime romance stories and must say this one was expertly done. Two guys in love with the same gal, it is a most believable presentation. The movie is “Colitz”.
It successfully avoids all current themes because all the women are young, slim, white virgins, and the stars are all heterosexual. There were no divorcees or single mothers, no feminists or any scenes of men being set in their place. Then again, the movie was made in Britain. The events are based on fact, but not enough to make the movie any kind of history lesson, yet a great appeal to logos.
(I am informed later I should explain logos. That is “logos”, the ancient Greek term for arguments that are supported by clear and undistorted conclusions based on external facts. This is as opposed to pathos and ethos, the other two forms of persuasion. Pathos is the appeal to emotion, ethos is the appeal the author shows by clarity of his interpretations. An interesting parallel here is the Run
t, who understands none of this, but thinks if he does not emotionally agree with a piece of logic, it is therefore not logic!)
JZ gave me a 24” TV he had taking up space in his closet. Great, because I didn’t have the heart to tell him the 15” plasma he sold me was too small for anything but a computer monitor. The TV is too large for my entertainment unit. At least I can see it without squinting.
We found out that the video blackout of “300”, the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, lasts until July. That is, even though it is not in most theaters, it will not be released on DVD until that time. The reviews say it is all action and no plot. I must see this. JZ and I stopped by a video game store, I wanted to see the newest software on the market. It is the same old, but the scenery is incredible. I tried the Xbox 360, in a setup worth around $800. Very nice.
The realism is incredible, approaching 3D. JZ says his nephew is a whiz on the games. I must take him on some day to see how true that is. The days of repetitious backgrounds and players are gone. I drove a truck game that even fell apart correctly when the truck hit something or got hit. If there is time, I need to try a flight simulator on a system like this. Just incredible. I did notice the way the test units were set up that these Xbox units must have a problem with overheating that they are not telling us about. The hand-helds would remind older players of the Mario Bros, no improvement there. The biggest advance: the controls are very responsive. Remember when you had to hit the trigger five times?
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