Summer's Here... and I have a convertible
June 9:Summer's Here and the Time is Right
I got my new car. Pontiac G6 hard top convertible. Monsoon sound system. Just in time, too. The weather heated up and that roof went down. The kids? "I want the roof down, daddy!" Showing up to school with the roof down, now that's status.
In the morning, it usually isn't warm enough to drop the roof. But that first time going home, that changed everything. It wasn't even that warm. But that roof went down, and the smile just started. Feel the sun on my head. Turn on the XM. It's playing
"Going Mobile," by The Who. Beep beep!!
Cory said I needed good driving music for it… maybe '60's surf music. He's right, but still I seek out things to play in the G6.
Bruce Springsteen's latest just rocks. At the and of "Jesse James," there's a bass note. It's gotta be under 20 hertz. It just rumbles, loud and clear. The whole album thumps. And the drums! Let there be drums! Listen to those crashes at the end of "O Mary Don't You Weep" or during "John Henry" and weep. But my favorite has to be the washboard. Yes, the washboard. During "Jacob's Ladder," coming through loud and clear.
For eight dollars I picked up the
Rhino Wilson Picket Greatest Hits album over at CostCo (so why am I linking to amazon? Convenience, convenience). Saves me from having Picket spread over various other collections, and besides, it between "Midnight Hour" and "Funky Broadway" and "Mustang Sally" it was sure to be good top down music. And it is… though it provides no temptation to speed. Those songs, with Al Jackson Jr. holding down the beat, are struts, not sprints. Fine, fine struts.
I've been working strange hours lately. Starting at 4pm, because we're temporarily in "shift" mode. So I can lounge a little at home, pick strawberries and cherries (yay! Cherries!), take a little dip, and then drive on in with the top down. Today, the rain was due to hold off until 6pm. But… the rain didn't hold off until 6pm. Driving the Lodge Freeway, seeing the blue skies being occluded by dark clouds, with lightning bolts ahead, and knowing that I can't put the roof back up unless I put the car in park. Then it started to rain. But I realized that as long as I kept my speed high enough, it wouldn't rain on me. So I turned the volume up and put my foot down. Watch the police miss me, I'm mobile.
July 21:The right rear window molding came off while I was putting up the window! It was just hanging there -- what's
that??? That was on the 11th. I didn't want to take it in. I just
have to drive, drive, drive. Finally, 10 days later, I take it in. But... they don't need the car! Hallelujah! This has been happening with some frequency, and the design's been modified. But it'll take a couple weeks to get the replacement parts... It rained once in the interim, hard rain. Kinda funny seeing the little bit that got through the opening. I can get the molding in there long enough to go through a car wash, that's good enough for me!
August 3:Being in a convertible is sort of like being in a little private club -- or I imagine it's what it would be like to be in a little private club, only it's not so little and not so private. In a car, a regular car, I'm kinda shut off from the world... except, of course, when someone cuts somebody off. Even with the windows open, I keep to myself.
The convertible with the top down, that's just a different story. Everybody stares. And everybody wants one. And if another convertible comes along, 'ya gotta share the joy. Especially the women. Since I've had this car, it seems that every woman driving a convertible has pulled up to me and chatted. Women
not in convertibles come up, too. A couple weeks ago, my friend Karen spotted me on the Lodge while I drove to work, managed to get my attention, and then she wanted to talk, too -- while maintaining speed!
It's at the traffic lights where it gets funniest. One day I saw a white G6, the woman driving it had to pull up, tell me she had bought it earlier in the day, and how much she was in love with it. I like that kind of story. Another time, it was two women giggling at their fortune to be out in the convertible.
This past week, it's been up near 100 degrees every day. So hot that it's sweaty even at high speeds... but leaving the top up just isn't an option. Every song, every rock song, every folk song, every Johnny Cash prison song... every song just sounds better. I pulled up to home one morning as
Mitch Ryder's "Sock it to Me" played, and I remembered my first ever Bruce Springsteen concert, 25 years earlier nearly to the day, when he closed out the show with that song.
This morning, I had the radio on, and
The Temptations came on with "The Way You Do the Things You Do." That's one of my all-time sing-along songs, it has the best rhymes -- candle/handle, and some really great lines. So I'm singing along, "the way you swept me off my feeeeeeet, you know you could have been a broomstick," and of course there's a danger in doing that with the top down, especially as the light turns red. In the next lane, a young woman in a Saab convertible pulled up and smiled. "Are you going to see them at DTE? They're going to be there Saturday night." She was just impressed that I knew the broomstick line, I'm sure.
August 22:A dentist's appointment. Not just any appointment, time to put in a big filling... calling it root canal avoidance. In the morning I took the car down to the garage one more time, they said the replacement molding was in... but it didn't work. Going down Northwestern Highway,
"Born to Run" comes on. Turn it up way high. Warm day, sun's out, coming up to a stop light -- and for that song, it seems appropriate to be waiting for the light to go to green as the final verse starts. It has heaven on wheels.
So, on the the dentist.
The Kinks doing "Apeman." I want to sail away to a distant shore -- how appropriate! But I can't listen to the whole song, it's still going as I part the song to go on and be drilled.
In the afternoon, since I'm home anyway as the novacaine is wearing off, I'm elected to take Elianna to her gymnastics class. Elianna ducks under the wind, as usual. We listen to XM Kids. In the class, she's almost too exuberant, climbing places she shouldn't be. Coming home, sun's still out, one last ride for today. It's the Mindy show on XM Kids, and up comes... The Kinks doing "Apeman"! It's still going as I park at home, but now that I'm on the home shore I let it play through.
August 27Rain. Heavy rain. The roofs will have to stay up today.
I guess it's time to post.
The 1961 Hit Parade
In the car, getting late in the evening, driving down I-70 through Maryland near the end of a long family drive.
Turned on XM6, the sixties station. They were doing a countdown, I guess of this day/week in 1961. The DJ was managed to mispronounce Warren Spahn's name (Spahn won his 300th game this week that year), but no matter, the music won out. They were doing the top 16 of 1961.
Coming in at #16:
Ike and Tina, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine." I don't know the last time I heard someone other than Springsteen do this song. Nor did I appreciate just how faithfully Bruce imitated Tina's voice. This put me in a good mood.
#15:
The Chordettes doing "Never On Sunday." Now, everyone knows the melody to this one. But I don't recall ever hearing it with the words. Nor did I ever really put a context to Bruce's "Never On Sunday" comment in the
"Blood Brothers" video. Now I'm smiling, big time: I think I know what Burce was doing that summer, approaching his 12th birthday -- he was all day at the beach with his radio.
After a couple more, on comes
Fats Domino. "Let the Four Winds Blow." This is near spooky. Fun and spooky. And we're not done.
Checking in at #10 is
Elvis with "Little Sister", did Bruce ever do that one? No matter, I always liked that one. Then at #9, none other than
Gary U.S. Bonds with "School's Out."
What a list! And here I had always thought that the '60's didn't *really* start until The Beatles recorded
"Please Please Me" a couple years later.
A bunch of numbers higher up on the charts were dud, but there was one big curiosity: At #4,
The Highwaymen doing "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore." Bruce supposedly recorded "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" for
"The Seeger Sessions," though I guess there are no plans to release it.
Would that 11 year olds today be able to learn from the hit parade like that!
The numbers behind the numbers: Ned Lamont's financial disclosure, Wal-Mart and the Washington Times
On August 4rd, the Washington Times ran an article titled, "Lieberman rival owns stock in Wal-Mart", by Charles Hunt. See
"http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060803-112200-4787r.htm for the article. Since Lamont famously took incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman to task during the recent Connecticut primary campaign over a $1,000 Wal-Mart PAC contribution to Lieberman's campaign, and, accoring to the opening sentence of the Washington Times article, "sharply criticized the employment practices of Wal-Mart," the surface accusation appears to be one of hypocrisy.
The article says, "Mr. Lamont and his wife jointly own two accounts containing as much as $16,000 in Wal-Mart stock. Their Wal-Mart holdings spin off as much as $3,500 in annual dividends. In addition, a trust fund he set up for one of his children contains as much as $15,000 in Wal-Mart stock and spins off as much as $1,000 in dividends."
Something's not right with those numbers, so at the risk of killing off something that had no legs anyway, I decided to look into it.
I wasn't sure when I first read the article what "as much as" was supposed to mean, but there is no way that $16,000 in Wal-Mart stock is going to generate $3,500 in annual dividends. That would be a dividend rate of more than 20%. At that rate, screw it,
I'll be tempted to invest in Wal-Mart. I wonder what kind of math skills are needed suppose that a $16,000 holding might produce $3,500 in annual dividends, while a $15,000 holding produces $1,000 in dividends. Not to mention that "spin off" isn't a term normally applied to regular dividends.
Wal-Mart's current dividend rate is 1.5%. A $16,000 holding in that stock should be paying out less than $250 per year in dividends.
The Washington Times numbers are so bad, and the base level awareness so lame, that I ccouldn't trust any of the information. So I went out and found Lamont's financial disclosure. That's the source for these articles, and it can be found at
http://tray.com/pfd/S06pfd/00012/00012860.pdf.
There are three Wal-Mart listings, in his Goldman Sachs managed accounts. These aren't his "major" holdings," those are mostly Oak LLCs.
The first Wal-Mart listing is on page 31, for Goldman Sachs account #4. This lists "None (or less than $1,001)" as the value of the holding, with "None (or less than $201)" as the dividend amount.
The 2nd listing is on page 46, for Goldman Sachs account #5. That listing is "$1,001-$15,000," with dividend of $201-1,000."
The 3rd listing is on page 65, for Goldman Sachs account #11 (trust). That listing is for $1,001-$15,000," with dividend of "$201-$1,000."
The Goldman Sachs accounts are apparently partial S&P 500 mirror accounts, so the holdings are pretty obvious. Accounts 5 & 11 may be actual S&P 500 accounts, while account 4 is mostly a much smaller subset. Since Wal-Mart is in the S&P 500, anyone with an S&P 500 mutual fund has some level of Wal-Mart holdings, and by that measure, I'm guilty, too.
Where did the Washington Times numbers come from? Accounts 4 and 5 have maximum holdings of $1000 and $15000, for a total of $16000. Since account 5 payed over $200 in dividends, it's safe to assume that the Wal-Mart holding in that account was near the $15000 number. If we assume the "reporting period" to be tax year 2005, then his holdings of Wal-Mart, which paid 60 cents dividend during the year, had to be at least 333 shares during the year. Wal-Mart's year-end price of $46.80 per share would have his 333 shares worth more than $15,000, so either the reporting period isn't precisely the tax year, or he sold some of the account off before year's end. Most likely, his actual dividend for this account barely surpassed $200.
How about the "as much as $3,500 in annual dividends"? Well, that's just wrong. Account 4 was less than $201 in dividends, and account 5 was $201-$1,000, for a maximum of $1,200. Where's the mistake? Whoever read the disclosure simply misread the listing for account #4, and mistook the entry for Wachovia Bank for that of Wal-Mart. I made the same mistake on first reading; the pdf is presented on a rotated basis, and it's an easy mistake to make. The Wachovia entry is a dividend of $1,001-$2,500; had that been the range for Wal-Mart than the "as much as $3,500 in annual dividends" would have been correct, though entirely misleading. As already noted, his actual dividend amount in account #5 was likely not much beyond $200, and his actual dividend for account #4 was less than $200. So the "as much as $3500 in annual dividends" is bogus; the actual number was probably under $400.
We don't know how much Wal-Mart stock Lamont had in account #4; it appears that account #4 was liquidated prior to the end of the reporting period, so the "None (or less than $1,001)" entry for the stock value does not reflect his holdings throughout 2005. Nonetheless, since his Wal-Mart dividends for that account were less than those for account #5, it seems likely that his Wal-Mart stock holdings were less as well -- that is, it seems likely that they were less than $15,000 in that account even before he sold it off. Considering his other account holdings in account #4 as well as his capital gains reporting, it would seem likely that Lamont's Wal-Mart holdings in that account were beteen $1,001 and $15,000 while he had the account open. Also, since the reporting for this account does not include a capital gain for Wal-Mart, even though the account was liquidated, it seems that Lamont's Wal-Mart position in account 4 was sold at a loss.
The last set of figures in the Washington Times article come from account #11. As with account #5, a position with less than $15,000 of Wal-Mart stock but dividends in excess of $200 is very likely a position that is very close to both of those limits. So, it is likely that his actual dividend for account #11 was just above $200.
Based on the disclosure statements, it would appear that Lamont held a total of maybe $40,000 in Wal-Mart stock in 2005, realized around $600 in dividends from that stock, and sold some of that stock at a loss. Those are substantial holdings, though probably less than what he had in Halliburton. Nonetheless, those holdings pale in comparison to what he held in the big Oak LLCs, some of which were funded with several million dollars, including one with a holding of more than $25 million.
As to whether Lamont knew... not sure it matters, really. Lamont's wife, as a managing partner in Oak Investments, must be aware that Wal-Mart is in the S&P 500 and she's also aware that they hold managed S&P 500 accounts. Whether he knew the composition of the accounts at that level... who knows?
I don't have a position on Ned Lamont, in general. But this charge, it seems to me, is pretty worthless.
Charity results, Q2 2006
Last November, I established an associates account with amazon, going primarily from my discography page (
http://bruce.orel.ws/discography.html). Any
amazon.com
sales generated by people navigating to amazon from my site generates commissions, that amazon eventually sends my way.
As I noted at that time, anything that comes my way from amazon.com will be turned over to charity, on a quarterly basis, doubled by a match from me. All selected charities will be from the set of charities documented at
http://bruce.orel.ws/chartiies.html.
During the second quarter of 2006, I introduced a new section of the site, "The Songs of the Seeger Sessions," at
http://bruce.orel.ws/seegersessions. When the site was prominently linked in from
http://www.brucespringsteen.net and from several other high-volume sites shortly before the release of "The Seeger Sessions," traffic on my sites increased substantially. I added amazon linkage to the new section shortly thereafter.
Due in large part to the increased traffic, a total of 157 items were sold by amazon off links from the site during Q2, including 58 copies of "The Seeger Sessions." Total commissions for the quarter were $144.28, more than tripling the previous high. With rounding, this quarter's donation+match is $300.00.
I have selected three charities as equal recipients of this quarter's commission + match:
All of these charities combat hunger in various way, and Bruce has repeatedly supported their work over the years
If you buy things at amazon (doesn't have to be Bruce stuff), please consider going through one of the links off
http://bruce.orel.ws/discography.html, or the left panel link on any page within the new site "The Songs of the Seeger Sessions" (
http://bruce.orel.ws/seegersessions). You'll get the same prices as ever, and a percentage will end up with one of the charities. If you have any recommendations for the next recipient, please contact me at
matt@orel.ws.
Thanks to everyone who has participated! Results for Q3, along with the next recipient, will be announced in
approximately 3 months.
Heat, Apples and Crickets
July 23, a cool night, finally time for the first apple cider of the season -- tart! Using the transparents. Nearly 3 gallons, and just in time, we were down to our last gallon, and I wouldn't have wanted to
buy any. At the farmers' market someone was selling something called "Lodi," which is very similar. Someone else was selling all the corn you could fit in a bag for $2.50. I bought the corn -- 20 ears.
Then, the heat wave. So hot I almost put the roof up in the convertible... but I resisted. The pool hit 88.2 degrees, with zero chlorine. A fungus came and wiped out the cucumbers, pretty much overnight. Not as bad as the animals attacking the corn... but only because corn is nearly holy and cucumbers aren't.
July 31, the crickets came out.
August 2, a light show as the clouds rolled in and the heat wave finally broke. Heat lightning everywhere.
This is the best time of year. Too bad it all ends so quickly.
