Funny Story

I could claim that I read Tom Wolfe's work for its erudition but the honest truth is I most enjoy its humor. Wolfe makes me laugh so hard that coffee flies out of my nose. That happened today at Starbucks and I needed several napkins to clean up the mess.

This anecdote needs context. Tom Wolfe started his career in the early 1960s as a general assignment reporter at a dying newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune. The newspaper had a moribund Sunday supplement that it wanted to turn around. They hired a new Editor, Clay Felker, and told two staff writers (Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin) to produce articles for the weekly supplement. (This was in addition to their normal duties).  The supplement was re-named "New York."

A boulevardier, Felker had sensitive antennae for interesting New York social life. He pointed Wolfe and Breslin toward the beau monde, fascinating sub-cultures and odd events. Wolfe and Breslin investigated these and wrote some of the most trenchant articles in magazine history (e.g., "Radical Chic"). The supplement became immensely popular: readers loved exciting tales of hidden social life in the Big Apple. The host-newspaper, however, died. Soon after, Clay Felker bought rights to the name of the supplement ("New York") and revived it as a standalone magazine. The magazine prospered for five decades and continues to exist today.

Okay, here comes the funny part...

Years later, at a party celebrating the history of New York magazine, Tom gave a speech praising Clay Felker. He relayed how Felker was a natural New Yorker from earliest childhood. To prove his point, Wolfe said Felker's sister told him that "Baby Clay's first complete sentence was 'Whaddaya mean, I 'don't have a reservation'?"

Nearing The End

Oh, no!

I've spent three months devouring with delight the written work of Tom Wolfe. Prodigious over a lengthy 60-year career, Tom wrote 18 books and 110 magazine articles. As euphoric as I've been reading his Promethean oeuvre, I'm equally saddened realizing I'm near the end. I've read all of Wolfe's major works (e.g., "The Right Stuff", "Radical Chic", "Back to Blood") and am almost done with lesser-known stuff. Worth noting is that even these pieces -- on subjects you don't expect to care about (like the history of architecture) -- are fascinatingly presented. Tom makes them come alive with humor and insight.

I can't nudge Wolfe into writing more since he's, um, dead so the only alternative is to dive into his literary archive. It's housed at the New York Public Library. I'm agog to go there next year and explore Tom's drafts, correspondence and personal memorabilia. I also want to visit the archive to pay respect to a hierophant. 

In the last book I read ("Hooking Up") there are several passages with éclat:

- "...sitting there as primly erect as a 13-year old girl on a horse at a horse show."

- "...her prose style...had a handicapped parking sticker."

- "this big egomaniac garruling around town and batting everyone over the head with his ego as if it were a pig bladder."

- "Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity."

- "...wringing his heart out and pouring soul all over you."

Tom Wolfe is a writer whose artistic effort deserves acclaim. I, for one, am applauding. 

New Swiss Watch

Most people are normal. They fit the mold. A few of us, however, aren't normal. We were formed oddly and live outside convention. I'm one of them.

This characteristic often guides my taste in art. I gravitate toward unusual, unorthodox objects. Currently the luxury watch community is re-discovering "shaped watches" -- watches whose form isn't the traditional circle. Shaped watches are often asymmetrical. In the past I pined for several vintage examples; now I'm looking at a new model from Swiss-maker Audemars Piguet [AP].

The watch (AP [Re]Master 02) draws inspiration from Brutalist design used in an earlier AP timepiece (1960-63). AP calls the creation a "tribute to Brutalism" and celebration of its heritage. (Brutalism is an architectural style that emerged in the 1950s.)

What do you think of this design? Would you wear a watch of asymmetrical shape?

Link: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/introducing-ap-remaster02

Lesley Gore

Lesley Gore grew up in New Jersey and is being inducted into the NJ Hall of Fame. She's a singer who became famous in 1963 with the hit "It's My Party" [And I'll Cry If I Want To]. Lesley was only 16 years old when she sang that song. 

Despite its success Lesley always felt her signature song was another one she wrote: "You Don't Own Me." Its lyrics are potent:

You don't own me

I'm not just one of your many toys

You don't own me

Don't say I can't go with other boys

And don't tell me what to do

Don't tell me what to say

And please, when I go out with you

Don't put me on display 'cause

You don't own me

Don't try to change me in any way

You don't own me

Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay

I don't tell you what to say

I don't tell you what to do

So just let me be myself

That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young

I'm free and I love to be free

To live my life the way I want

To say and do whatever I please

Bitcoin

Seldom do we catch a star. With luck, I grabbed one.

A decade ago I invested in cryptocurrency (Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum). At the time Bitcoin cost $600 and Ether was $150.

Back then we expected BTC to reach four-figures ($1,000+). It soon did. We hoped it might someday reach five-figures ($10,000+) -- a level deemed improbable by conventional observers. A prescient few, including myself, believed BTC could someday scale Mount Olympus and hit six-figures: $100,000+. We were called crazy and worse.

Bitcoin just reached this summit and planted its flag. The view up here is magnificent! Ecce Crypto!

I never kept my enthusiasm for blockchain technology a secret. I posted about it frequently. Sensing uninterest among you I eased the throttle back on those posts but still kept encouraging everyone to join this lucrative journey. You can't say I didn't try.

Bitcoin will continue to grow and 2025 will be another breakout year. There was an explosion of investment in BTC ETFs this year: many billions of dollars flowed in. People can now invest in Bitcoin by simply calling a stockbroker and they're doing so in large numbers.

Crypto is the greatest financial opportunity of our time. Where else could someone turn a small stake (say, $30,000) into life-changing fortune ($5 Million)?

"Sunset Boulevard"

Joe: You used to be big.

Gloria: I am big! It's the pictures that got small.

We don't expect our perspective to shift with age... but it does. When I first watched the classic film "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) thirty years ago I naturally identified with struggling young screenwriter Joe. As the story opens, Joe is evading tough-guys from a finance company intent on repossessing his car. For non-payment, of course. In his escape Joe limps into a Hollywood estate, once grand but now fetid from neglect. There he stumbles upon eccentric inhabitants: a once-famous but now aged silent-movie star, Norma Desmond, her (dead) pet monkey, and her creepy butler Max. 

Seeing the movie again, now, I relate more to Norma than young Joe. Norma is clinging to a fantasy: her "return" to the cinematic spotlight. We, the audience, are invited to ponder whether Norma is rational or insane. Delusion is an easy guess given her decrepit circumstances. Indeed, screenwriter Joe's first opinion of her compares Norma to Miss Haversham in "Great Expectations."

But... perhaps Norma isn't crazy. After all, she WAS a star thirty years ago. Her exaggerated affect had cultural value back then. And she's still remembered by Hollywood mogul, Cecil B. DeMille -- who plays himself in the movie, along with other "waxworks" like Buster Keaton.

The film hits me differently now as I ponder whether I'm still rational -- or have drifted away from you youngsters into a magical land of personal fantasy. Last year, when I was physically, socially and spiritually separated from "society" I felt pangs and bliss of deep isolation. In that state you question why we seek human connection. Normal people merely assume an answer but those on the outskirts -- the ill, the deviant, the insane -- face this question with arrant seriousness. Why do we care about connecting to their "reality"? Should we care? It's possible to detach from everyone else and drift away on your own ice-floe. Like the elderly in some indigenous arctic tribes.

Some, like Norma and me, choose to "return" to society -- but with radically new perspective. Things that formerly mattered, now don't. Friendship needs to be real, not phony. Empty gestures to attract social applause (most posting on social media) are realized to be hollow and absurd. Ultimately, we can "make a comeback" but we'll do it on our own terms, infused with real meaning, not false pretenses designed merely to impress others.

"Alright, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up!"

"Back to Blood"

Tom Wolfe, who started out as a journalist, became one of our best writers. His 18 books include four novels that are notable for their non-fiction character. Wolfe weaves into stories knowledge about art, culture, sociology and psychology. That Balzac-inspired approach entrances me.

I'm almost through Wolfe's complete oeuvre and want to report on his last novel, "Back to Blood" (2012). It is immensely entertaining. The story begins at a poor Cuban community in Miami but ends up as satire of the international art market and its chicanery. Miami Art Basil is one of the most prominent art fairs in the world where ultra-rich collectors vie for hot art. Wolfe knows the art world better than any other writer and is merciless describing its predations.

In his work Wolfe creates characters and scenes of detailed specificity. You easily believe they're real; they seem too authentic to be fictional.

Reading "Back to Blood" was the most enjoyable thing I did this year. Strangers in Starbucks probably wondered why I was smiling and laughing while staring at a Kindle. I'm agog to finish Wolfe's books and, strictly entre nous, recommend his work.

For a sample of delightful metaphors and wordplay consider:

- "The look on Sergei's face took his breath away. This was not the mere look that kills. This was the look that kills and then smoke-cures the carcass and eats it."

- Rich collectors are "eager to inhale the emanations of Art and other Higher Things amid the squalor of" urban art districts.

- She wore "enough black eyeshadow to make her eyes look like a pair of glistening orbs floating upon a pair of concupiscent mascara pools."

- The curtains hanging in the mansion were "almost comically magnificent."

- "All three [girls] were shrink-wrapped in denim. Their jeans hugged their declivities fore and aft, entered every crevice, explored every hill and dale of their lower abdomens and climbed their montes veneris."

- He sat "at a desk with a surface you could land a Piper Cub on."

Finally, Wolfe enlarges my vocabulary with esoteric words like zephyr, rakehell and nob. I like building new wings on my Word Warehouse.