I’m growing quite fond of my digital NY Times subscription because the paper provides some great fodder for my work blog. Oddly enough, the health writing seems to be providing the majority of this fodder so far. I purchased my subscription for half price late last year when they were running holiday deals and I’ll probably renew. Their marketing worked.

There was a great article the other day entitled “What Doctors Can Learn From Musicians,” which I think is highly applicable for finance and accounting teams. The author, health writer and doctor Danielle Ofri, M.D., also plays the cello on the side. She sees similarities in practicing medicine and performing a musical piece. Here’s what she said after mastering a difficult line of music:

It made me think about an unusual essay in The Annals of Internal Medicine called “Music Lessons: What Musicians Can Teach Doctors.” The author, Dr. Frank Davidoff, an internist and former editor of the Annals, makes the interesting point that although medicine is learned over many years, the actual practice of clinical medicine is a performance, “in the best and deepest sense of the word.”

Doctors spend much of their energy keeping up with the vast medical knowledge, but scant attention is paid to how this knowledge is dispensed in actual practice, or what Dr. Davidoff would call the performing of medicine.

I find parallels to being a member of the finance and accounting departments. Isn’t it similar? It’s important for controllers and CFOs to have this vast reservoir of knowledge, but to practice finance effectively, one needs to synthesize that knowledge into insightful analysis at the board meeting when the CEO says, “Explain to me what’s going on in our business.”

Answering that question from the CEO is a performance. It’s not a life and death performance, so not on par with performing a difficult surgery, but it is enlightening to think of practicing finance in these terms.

Dr. Ofri’s point is that getting better at the performance won’t happen if you’re going to stick with the tired practice of reading journals, attending conferences, and getting lectured occasionally. She asserts that real improvement comes when you open yourself to coaching and find the right person to do the coaching.

As finance leaders, we need to think like a coach. Of course, we need to do it within the strict corporate guidelines laid down by Human Resources and their outdated performance assessment rules. This is simple though. All it really means as that you don’t accept complacency in any form from your team, almost to the extreme. As Dr. Ofri puts it:

In music, plateaus are flatly unaccepted. When complacency creeps into my cello practice, my teacher exhorts me, “If you aren’t improving, you are getting worse!” Could a medical coach bring back the intellectual vibrancy from medical school days, spur that constant growth?

On the flip side, as finance team members, we need to be open to critique and check our ego at our coaches door.

Criticism, no matter how softly couched or solidly constructive, is always hard to take. But without fail, I improve after these critiques, once I’ve scraped my battered ego off the floor.

Whether we are finance people or not, these things are hard and often go against our DNA. Doing the critiquing and receiving the critique can be difficult, but the rewards are great if you’re open to them.

For further reading, check out this article by Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Ofri references it in her article. Dr. Gawande put the idea of coaching to a real-world test, on himself. It’s really interesting.

Let’s apply this practically to the finance department with a simple example. Do you have anyone in your group who is more proficient in Excel than the rest of the crew? They’re the coach; have them review someone else’s spreadsheet or have them sit and watch while someone else builds a spreadsheet (the coach just remains silent, observes, and makes notes). After, the coach and team member review and discuss the coaching points in detail.

Could a pivot table have been used instead of a subtotal. Would an INDEX/MATCH function have been more appropriate than VLOOKUP. Are the tabs optimized for navigation with descriptive names and standard colors?

Give it a try. I wish I would have had more of this in my early work days. I’m certainly always open to it now.

If you like historical fiction, you’ll like David Liss. Most of his books have focused on Great Britain, but this one tackles the US during George Washington’s presidency and focuses on the rise of Alexander Hamilton as a political game-changer. It’s rich in history and has two great fictional main characters who share scenes in an alternating manner, both from the first person perspective.

I’m not as familiar as I want to be with Alexander Hamilton. He seems to get the “most influential guy you don’t know about” treatment a lot. He was in the mix with those who shaped our nation, but doesn’t seem to get the same notoriety as Washington, Jefferson, or Adams. I almost bought the Ron Chernow authored bio on Hamilton but I’m not in the mood for 800 plus pages of history right now. It just seems a little daunting.

I did, however, get The Federalist Papers, which Hamilton authored along with John Jay and James Madison. I got it for free on my Kindle. I’m going to try and plow through it casually by the end of this year, but it won’t be a priority. Somewhere in these writings are the roots of how Hamilton justified creating a central bank, which allowed the government to take on debt. This debt would then be paid off by taxes and tariffs that he instituted (since he was the first Secretary of the Treasury), the most famous of which being his tax on whiskey producers in the western United States.

This book tells two sides of the story of the (real) Panic of 1792 using a fictional woman named Joan Maycott and a fictional man named Ethan Saunders. Maycott is a western farmer who’s husband has figured out how to make some very flavorful whiskey and Saunders is a disgraced, ex-Revolutionary War spy who is recruited by Alexander Hamilton to ferret out some financial hijinks happening in the newly-created American financial community.

The Maycott character is serious and dramatic, while the Saunders character is crass and hilarious. This contrast breaks up the book nicely and makes for an enjoyable, fast read. It’s also thought-provoking, especially in this day and age of conservative/liberal polarization, our recent financial crisis, and the 99% camping out in downtown. There’s a point in here somewhere. I think one thing Liss is trying to say is that government corruption and cronyism and their inextricable links to the financial community are nothing new; that we should have seen this crisis coming because it happened from the beginning – in the earliest days of the central bank.

Political positions aside, Liss creates fun, likable characters and fictional plot elements that make it feel like a thriller. I’ve read A Spectacle of Corruption and A Conspiracy of Paper and loved them both. In fact, like clockwork, I’ve read a David Liss book in Jan/Feb every three years starting in 2006. He has four more books so I’m looking forward to getting started on the next one in 2015.

That’s idiotic. I’m especially discouraged by my lack of follow-up. I said back in 2009 that I wanted to dig up more stuff on Alexander Hamilton and I haven’t done anything, save for reading this book. This website does bear the ugly truth at times. I didn’t even remember making a tacit commitment to expand my knowledge of Hamilton, but upon re-reading my thoughts from three years ago, my procrastination and lack of follow-up are laid bare.

I gotta get to work.

I’ve put together my own vertical sampling of Immigrant Song. I’ve done this with other tunes unknowingly in the past, but now I’m getting organized  so be ready for occasional follow-ups. It’s great fun to mix styles and vintages for musica magnifico. I’m betting that the aficionados will find this vertical concept revolting, which is understandable. That’s fine.

This particular foray was prompted by the opening song for the US version of TGWTDT by Trent Reznor and Karen O. As I said, it’s a great tune and perfect for the film. Karen O fills Robert Plant’s vocals well. It certainly makes you notice how awesome Plant’s voice was.

Before you purist-types start tuning me out, know that I’ve had the Led Zeppelin version for a while. I’m not a huge fan of Led Zeppelin so Immigrant Song doesn’t get much air time in my world. I own it via their Remasters album, which I listen to maybe once every two or three years. Their version is clearly the best of the bunch and this little vertical foray has resulted in me listening to a lot more Led Zeppelin lately. If you need a listen, here’s a cool live version of the Led Zeppelin classic from Rhino’s official YouTube site (their label).

So let’s run through this. By default, I consider the original the best ever, so I don’t rank it. Of the others, here’s how they fall out, ordered by my own preference.

• Trent Reznor and Karen O mentioned above.
• Gotthard is a Swiss heavy metal band with 80s hair metal sound and style. They’ve topped Swiss charts at least 11 times. This live version has vocals that, to me, sound much like Scorpions’ lead singer Klaus Meine.
• Adagio is French art-metal group. This is an instrumental version running about five minutes with a lot of big guitar interpretation along with some funky keyboards and stringed instruments.
• Ann Wilson is the woman from Heart. She does a very mellow, slow-moving version which is pretty cool.
• Stryper is a Christian rock group. They stay very true to the original in terms of time and instrumentation. However, they do some weird digital things with the lead singer’s voice. It’s still good stuff.
• Dread Zeppelin (Dejah-Voodoo version) is a Led Zeppelin cover band. They do Immigrant Song a lot I imagine. This version uses electronica and a dance mix type of vibe, with some harsh vocals tossed in. Odd, but it works.
• Great White is the 80s hair metal band famous for Once Bitten, Twice Shy. This is a passable live version.
• Dread Zeppelin (Un-Led-Ed) also did a version in what I’ll call Elvis Mode. They evidently have an Elvis impersonator in the band and he does the vocals. It’s really strange, paced like Ann Wilson’s version but with a reggae feel and Elvis voice. I can’t get behind this.

I’m not sure if I’ll buy any albums of the above groups. Gotthard and Adagio probably have the most potential. I’ll get around to listening to more samples for each this year. We’ll see.

All of these have been in the rotation for weeks now. It probably won’t be long before I’ve had my fill of the song. Be sure, this little exercise has introduced me to a bunch of new music and re-introduced me to some old stuff.

That’s the promo from the Jerry West segment on Real Sports a few months ago. I saw it and immediately bought his new book. It’s an auto-biography without a lot of cheer. He’s a tortured soul who’s unmitigated success in all things basketball hasn’t been able to stop terrible bouts of depression. It made for a tough read at times.

Basketball was my first sports love. To me, it’s about Magic’s ear-to-ear smile, MJ’s fist pump after the buzzer-beater over Ehlo, Larry diving for a loose ball, and LeBron clapping rosin in the air at the scorer’s table. It’s fantastic. It’s a spectacle, but a spectacle with substance. I still contend that these guys are the greatest athletes in the world. Period.

If you’re not careful, this book can suck that spectacle right out of the sport. West admits in the credits that he wasn’t writing a basketball book necessarily. In my view, this is a form of therapy for him.

Let’s talk about this guy and basketball. He is the NBA. I’m serious, he really is the NBA. He’s the guy on the logo. He was a great player for the Lakers (check his stats) and a great GM for the Lakers (think showtime and Kobe/Shaq). The guy threw down some amazing numbers. He then went on to have a successful, albeit short, stint with the Memphis Grizzlies. He’s achieved about everything you can achieve in the sport.

But it’s been a labor for the guy. He had an ugly childhood. His dad was abusive and he lost a beloved brother to the Korean War. These things, along with growing up on the brink of poverty in rural West Virginia, beat him down, but also made him hungry to make something of himself, to seek out a better life. He was, and remains, an intensely competitive individual, which probably contributed greatly to his success on the court. Off the court, his self-confessed personality flaws haven’t been much of a hindrance. Here’s how he describes his demeanor.

I am often painfully awkward or detached when I greet someone, including family, and today was no exception. I am not very demonstrative. I hardly ever hug. I rarely do it with my own children, or with Karen. It doesn’t mean I am not glad to see them; it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It’s the same as not easily picking up the phone to call someone; it’s just how I am. And much of that, I am convinced, has to do with the almost complete lack of nurturing I received as a child. Cookie refers to the home we grew up in as “the ice house,” but that isn’t even the half of it. (page 18)

You can see that he may not be very likable. He also described instances like this, which gives him kind of an unpleasant vibe:

… Aside from the fact I eat very quickly, I am also particular about what I eat (as I am about what I wear). One time I went to a little Italian restaurant in Los Angeles and I ordered a caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes. When the salad came out, I could see right away the tomatoes were not heirlooms and told the waiter that. He assured me that they were and I insisted they weren’t. So he went back into the kitchen and checked with the chef and came back to report that I was right. (page 110)

Let’s face it, you can’t get to know athletes while they are playing. They can cover up a host of foibles and flaws during their playing years because they really just have to go out every day and score.

The post-playing life is a little different. Some athletes are extroverted and intelligent, so they go on to be announcers. West, however, was introverted and intelligent, so he went into management. His success in management was about equal to his success as a player, so he’s had the media spotlight on him for much longer than the average athlete. That’s had to have weighed on him.

So he’s over 70 and reflecting on his life, which spans almost the whole history of the NBA, in an honest and forthright manner. That’s what old people do. They say what’s on their mind and don’t care so much about the backlash. I have to believe this was a wonderful release for the guy.

He cuts loose. Well, as loose as he can cut, I guess.

I do like his sensibilities. He’s thoughtful and it felt throughout like he was being very honest. Here’s his take on a few things and some of his ruminations:

On the average West Virginian:

What I don’t understand is that some of these coal miners make sixty to a hundred thousand dollars a year and yet their first impulse is often to get a new car. I am loath to tell other people how to live, but I feel strongly that if their first instinct would be to embrace the enduring importance of education, their children would be better off. (page 28)

On Tiger Woods:

I decided to reach out to Tiger because my sense was that very few people were. I sent him a letter and a copy of The Noticer, a little inspirational book that urges one to keep a larger perspective no matter what kind of crisis is being faced. … To this day, I don’t know if Tiger ever received the book, but if he did, I hope he read it. (page 53)

On racism, playing in the Boston Garden, and the fact that the Celtics play second fiddle to the Bruins:

I, on the other hand, always seemed to be a fan favorite. Part of the reason, I guess, was the way I played—giving my all each and every night—and part of it was no doubt because I was white. (page 128)

On Magic:

Earvin asked me all sorts of questions when he first came to the team, and I did my best to answer all of them. I liked that he didn’t come in with the attitude that he knew everything. He wanted to know “how to play in the NBA” and what the essential difference was between the pros and college. (page 151)

On Phil Jackson:

The difference was this: Pat and I were close and had a long history together; Phil and I had no relationship. None. He didn’t want me around, and he had absolutely no respect for me—of that, I have no doubt. (page 180)

On Wilt:

As for all Wilt’s claims of having slept with twenty thousand women? That is such a joke, because he was with me a lot of the time. When his sister Barbara would stop in unannounced to see him, she would go searching for any sign that a female had been there, but she could never find anything, not an article of clothing, not a photograph, nothing. (page 188)

On Kobe, referencing “the encounter with the woman in Colorado in the summer of 2003”:

I am not naïve about things like this, but to this day I feel he was set up. (page 198)

On Shaq, referencing the unveiling of the Jerry West statue in February 2011:

In the audience, Shaquille O’Neal, at the time a member of the Boston Celtics, if you can believe it, mouthed the words I love you, and I did the same in response. That he came meant as much, if not more, to me than anything. (page 304)

So that’s what you get, unvarnished, heartfelt, and kind of depressing. But it is an important glimpse into the NBA and a deep dive into a guy who’s always been kind of a mystery.

You know what I’m happy about? I’m happy that the lines are gone at the Doughnut Vault. I walked up and grabbed a chestnut and coffee a few Thursdays ago at 9:30am and didn’t have to wait. All those foodie posers are gone on the weekdays. You know who I’m talking about, it’s those people who wait in line for popular, unhealthy comfort food so they can snap a picture and put it on Facebook to appear cooler. What’s the point of that?

I have a new twist on that tired meme. I took this picture of a popular, unhealthy comfort food and posted it on Instagram with cross-postings to Facebook and Twitter and made a snarky comment so that it appears I live a life full of danger and excitement… and I threw in a funny hash tag to blow the doors off my unhealthy, comfort food street cred; all because I think it will make me appear cooler.

Okay, maybe I am a foodie poser.

No! I’m just a man, who grew up with a dad who owned a supermarket, which had a bakery in it, where I often sat with my grandfather eating donuts and drinking cold beverages, at a Formica counter, seated on spinning faux bar stools. That’s who I am.

So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that I occasionally deviate from from the path of righteousness and grab a doughnut. It’s in my blood. For all I know it’s a genetic blip that causes me to crave this stuff, probably inherited from my mother, like my early-onset male pattern baldness supposedly was.

I’ve had doughnuts on my mind since I saw a snippet from the Reader the other day about Munster Donut (thanks G). This truck-tire sized nutty, maple, caramel, sugary donut was just the antidote to get Munster Donut off my mind. It’s a massive raised doughnut with a glaze/frosting double whammy. By that I mean you get standard glazing on most of it, plus a subtle double dunk of chestnut frosting.

Note the nut pieces on top. #tasty

Note that I drink my coffee black. #hearthealthy

One other item I’d like to expand on – that little cracking in the frosting in the lower right need not raise any red flags. This pastry was fresh, fluffy, and gooey. The cracking, I think, is a function of the overlapping of the frosting styles causing a similar-substance adhesion issue. That’s a good thing! Who doesn’t love overlapping frosting?

In moderation, of course. Always in moderation.

Aside… not me talking, just me thinking… Munster Donut is not completely off my mind. I have friends in Munster. I want to get down there soon. This idea of a Three Floyds/Munster Donut combo sounds like an epic food adventure that I need to have in the mix in 2012.

I wanted a chocolate but they were sold out (that’s how it works folks, they make a batch and when they’re gone, they’re gone). Don’t worry, the chestnut isn’t settling, it’s a stellar fried pastry.

I saw this article in the NYT during the run-up to the New York City Marathon. It’s a story about barefoot running. I was so smitten by this idea that I bought the book and have started making the conversion to a forefoot strike. Heck, I even announced on Facebook that I was making the conversion. Now I have to do it.

I’m a runner of sorts. I do the occasional half-marathon and running is my number one form of cardio. However, it never feels great. Sure, it feels good, at times, but never great. I certainly never get the runner’s high and I think it’s because I usually have leg and foot pain. I’m not talking about acute injuries like pulled muscles, ripped tendons, or strained ligaments. I’m talking about general pain in my achilles, hips, and/or plantar muscle that have forced me to stop running for a few months after my last two half-marathons.

This needs to change. I’m ready to experiment.

So I’m taking a page out of this book. As I write this, I’m a month into a program comprised mostly of shoeless running-in-place in my living room with a goal of changing my running style. I’ve started from zero and will hopefully be able to run a mile or so outside by March 1st. The ultimate goal is that this new running technique will provide a life full of injury-free marathons and half-marathons.

But enough about me, let’s talk about this book. The author, Christopher MacDougall, faced running injuries much more acute than mine. He’s a writer with big-media type of resources (NYT, Men’s Health), so he set out to find a solution. Along the way, he discovered that there was enough material directly and indirectly related to his running discoveries to write a book about them.

His research sent him down a path to the Copper Canyon in Mexico and an indigenous people who are arguably the best runners in the world. They’re called the Tarahumara and they run like the wind in bare feet or in simple sandals that have no heal support. This book is mostly about them, but it’s also a wide-ranging, wonderful story about running in general. There a few distinct themes.

First of all, and most important to me, there’s a lot of running science in the book that advocates a forefoot landing. The theme being: Nike could be evil. MacDougall basically says that Nike and Bill Bowerman did more harm than good when they invented the modern running shoe with the cushioned heal. It wasn’t until MacDougall ditched the cushioned heal and started going minimalist that he was able to run injury-free.

Before the invention of a cushioned shoe, runners through the ages had identical form: Jesse Owens, Roger Bannister, Frank Shorter, and even Emil Zatopek all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: the only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. (page 180)

Do a search on YouTube about barefoot running and you’ll get a lot of stuff. Here is a video on running form by the guy who helped train MacDougall. The book has a few chapters devoted to technique, diet, and training. It’s certainly not a how-to book, but has enough information to get you started.

Secondly, besides being great runners, the Tarahumara are an amazing people who deserve our respect and our help. The theme being: The Tarahumara can tell us a lot about ourselves and educate us on how to live in the modern world. This part of the story is told in parallel with the story of a mythical figure called Caballo Blanco (white horse), who MacDougall met while researching this story. Caballo Blanco is a US citizen who has been living in and round the Tarahumara for years. It’s a human interest story and you have to stick with it because MacDougall bounces around a lot, but it has an awesome conclusion.

The Tarahumara live right. They are in great health, have virtually no violence, and party like rock stars. That’s something to shoot for.

Just like the rest of us, the Tarahumara have secret desires and grievances, but in a society where everyone relies on one another and there are no police to get between them, there has to be a way to satisfy lusts and grudges. What better than a booze-fest? Everyone gets ripped, goes wild, and then, chastened by bruises and hangovers, they dust themselves off and get on with their lives. (page 187)

Thirdly, the story of Caballo Blanco gets weaved into a history of the ultra-marathon movement. The theme being: Ultra-marathons are fun and just about anyone can do them. I do mean anyone. In fact, at the ultra-marathon distance, there is very little advantage in being male or being young. It’s a fascinating read and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I hope to be able to do one some day. The personalities involved in this movement are infectious.

Finally, the deepest and most affecting point relates to the linkage between running and humanity. The theme being: Without running we may not exist. Take 15 minutes out of your day and watch this:

Running is wired into human beings. Heck, it could be directly responsible for our survival. Our ability to sweat, allowing us to cool ourselves and effectively run all day, gives us dominion over all mammals. We can run down an antelope for food because they’re going to conk out before we do, it’s our natural advantage. There’s science behind this, here’s Dr. Dan Lieberman from Harvard:

To run an antelope to death, Lieberman determined, all you have to do is scare it into a gallop on a hot day. “If you keep just close enough for it to see you, it will keep sprinting away. After about ten or fifteen kilometers’ worth of running, it will go into hyperthermia and collapse.” Translation: if you can run six miles on a summer day then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom. (page 227)

But that’s the physical aspect of running. Running is also etched into our emotional well-being. Think about this.

Three times America has seen long distance-running skyrocket, and it’s always in the midst of a national crisis. (page 11)

MacDougall is talking about the big increases in running that happened after the Great Depression, in the early 70s (after Vietnam, race riots, a criminal president, etc…), and after 9/11. He goes on:

… Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe there’s a trigger in the human psyche, a coded response that activates our first and greatest survival skill when we sense the raptors approaching. In terms of stress relief and sensual pleasure, running is what you have in your life before sex. The equipment and desire come factory installed; all you have to do is let ’er rip and hang on for the ride. (page 12)

This stuff just fires me up to run. I say that as I sit here with some foot and ankle pain after a forefoot strike barefoot running session this morning. Hopefully it’s just my body acclimating, not rebelling.

I really enjoyed this book. I encourage you to check out MacDougall’s blog and some pics from the climactic race at the end of the book. I strongly suggest reading the book first, it will make the build-up to the climactic race quite exciting.

RIM has been in the news a lot lately with the hiring of their new CEO. I dug up Aswath Damodaran’s article from over a month ago about what he thinks RIM should do (he’s a Finance Professor from Stern School of Business). It’s especially applicable when considering Apple’s awesome quarter and Monday’s news that the new RIM CEO plans to “stay the course” (met by an over 8% drop in stock price to close at $15.56).

Damodaran breaks down RIM’s options in detail and appears to advocate the exact opposite of what the CEO is doing. He feels that the valuation is higher if the company takes the cash and starts winding down the operation.

… Disband your research and development teams, forget about product revamps and don’t even dream about more Playbooks. In effect, accept that you are an “old company” and behave like one. Your stockholders will be deeply grateful!

If you want to argue with Damodaran, which I’m not advocating, read his supporting argument first. He breaks down the numbers and even offers a spreadsheet if you want to do a little more analysis. He’s got a five year plan where he expects RIM to effectively shut down their operations, losing 20% market share each year.

It’s a great thought experiment. Damodaran suggests that the market is already pricing in the growth strategy with a lower stock price than the liquidation scenario. The drop in stock price with the “stay the course” message seems to corroborate Damodaran’s assertions. Is it too early to tell? Or, as Damodaran seems to say, have the Apple and Google juggernauts already dug RIM’s grave.

This has piqued my interest. I’m going to pay closer attention to this and check back to see how his assumptions fared. This highlights the academic versus the practical. Even if the liquidation scenario were more valuable, the chances of a CEO having the guts to follow it through are slim.

The finance person can really have an impact here as an impartial advisor and we can learn a lot from Damodaran’s approach. Damodaran has laid out the assumptions and done the math. What if you, as a finance person, brought some hard to swallow data like this to your CEO and strategy group for consideration? Would they review it earnestly, bat around the assumptions, and treat is as a viable alternative? Or would they kick you out of the office and have you add some stretch targets to the five year plan?

I strongly suggest reading Damodaran’s blog. He writes in simple, non-academic language and gives the intellectual and financial take on many news items. It’s always refreshing stuff.

We have us a situation here where a champion athlete is making the transition to the big screen, which is not uncommon. Many famous athletes have debuted in some respectable mainstream roles.

Jim Brown began his acting career with a supporting role in a western called Rio Conchos. Chuck Norris’ first credited role was supporting Bruce Lee in The Way of the Dragon. Arnold Schwarzeneger burst upon the scene with a staring role in Hercules in New York, a 75 minute romantic comedy.

Gina Carano had a bit part in some low budget action movie called Blood and Bone, which went straight to DVD. So by comparison, it would appear that she started at the bottom, in an even humbler role than these male stars. But, she’s making up for it quickly.

Very quickly.

She has officially arrived with Haywire, her sophomore effort. And I do mean arrived. Director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven) built this movie around Carano. Here’s the full story of how it came about from the NYT. It’s an interesting twist of fate involving Moneyball and a woman named Cyborg, of all things.

It’s a big-budget action flick with supporting roles by Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Ewan Macgregor, and Michael Fassbender. That’s a serious all-star cast, all devoted to supporting or thwarting the heroine, Carano, in her quest for revenge against a shady group of US government contractors and international bad guys.

I liked this flick. It was kind of muted and understated compared to, say, the Bourne franchise, often regarded as the most artful of the spy/thriller/action movie genre. Carano doesn’t talk much, runs around a lot, and gives a fair amount of steely glares. The fight scenes are short and not particularly vicious, although people do die. I’m not a fight scene aficionado (in fact, I’m a man of peace), but they didn’t seem as violent, loud, and over the top as Bourne or Kill Bill.

Her physicality is certainly evident. Early on there’s a long chase scene through the streets of Barcelona where she’s running down a bad guy. Just running. There are overhead shots, close-ups, and wide angle views. It seems to go on a long time. When she finally catches the bad guy, the fight scene is only seconds. So it’s physical but not gratuitous, the opposite of a fight-fueled, Tarantino-ish frenzy.

I think Carano can do some damage in Hollywood (no pun intended). Unfortunately, she didn’t hold up that well against a bevy of female action characters with movies (Rooney Mara, Kate Beckinsale) in her first week. Oh well. This movie may get some positive word-of-mouth effect as the weeks progress.

This is le Carre’s first book and it introduces George Smiley to the world. I happened to snag it from a used book store a few weeks back (gosh it was thrilling to spy it in the smelly racks of old paperbacks). I’ve decided to forego seeing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on the screen until I’ve read it. I’m reading the Smiley books in order and Tinker is book three.

I finished The Spy Who Came in from the Cold a few months back, which featured Smiley momentarily, but is not considered part of the Smiley books. In order, the Smiley books are Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People. The last three are Kindle ebooks, so they’re easy to grab. I’ll have to dig up A Murder of Quality on my own or bite the bullet and order a paperback version. It will be so much more fun to happen across it in a used bookstore, but I doubt I’ll have the patience.

This is George Smiley, as described by a colleague:

Odd little beggar, Smiley was. Reminded Mendel of a fat boy he’d played football with at school. Couldn’t run, couldn’t kick, blind as a bat but played like hell, never satisfied till he got himself torn to bits. Used to box, too. Came in wide open, swinging his arms about: got himself half killed before the referee stopped it. Clever bloke, too. (pg. 76, Bantam Paperback)

It’s a classic character: not pretty but get’s stuff done. A lot of stuff.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

We catch him as he’s getting older. Having spent a lifetime in the field, he’s now middle-aged and working in Cold War London. He’s a cynical, old school type, but his sentiments are prescient. Here’s him reflecting:

… The murder had taken place just in time to catch today’s papers and mercifully too late for last night’s news broadcast. What would this be? “Maniac killer in theatre”? “Death-lock murder – woman named”? He hated the Press as he hated advertising and television, he hated mass-media, the relentless persuasion of the twentieth century. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. That was why he hated Dieter now, hated what he stood for more strongly than ever before: it was the fabulous impertinence of renouncing the individual in favor of the mass. When had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom? Dieter cared nothing for human life: dreamed only of armies of faceless men bound by their lowest common denominators; he wanted to shape the world as if it were a tree, cutting off what did not fit in the regular image; for this he fashioned blank, soulless automatons like Mundt. Mundt was faceless like Dieter’s army, a trained killer born of the finest killer breed. (pg. 130, Bantam Paperback)

How can you not like Smiley? We may disagree with his sentiments, but it’s the first book so let the character unfold before reaching any broad conclusions. It does make evident the passions that the Cold War stoked.

It’s a short read (148 pages) and worth it. I have a feeling that it will set me up nicely to get a deeper understanding of the master spy as I read the next four books. It would have certainly helped me had I read it before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It would have set the scene and introduced me to Mundt, a key foil of Smiley’s.

Long live the British spy novel!

I’m trucking along with the same set of Baltimore cops and politicians and a few new characters. All told, I finished three seasons of The Wire in the last twelve months. That’s about 36 hours of video all consumed on my iPhone, mostly on airplanes. This show does not need a big screen.

Who needs a big screen and sound system for a thoughtful, detailed police drama like this? I save a lot of energy by just lighting the pixels on a 3.5 inch display. And it’s unrivaled in it’s convenience. I have a bottom-of-the-line Kindle, and the iPhone is even more convenient than pulling that thing out. In fact, the movie viewing experience on the iPhone is better than the book reading experience on the iPhone.

I like this show a lot because it’s packed with great stories. Jam-packed. On top of that, as it bounces between all of these stories, you get treated with bouts of wry humor, political commentary, and moving moments in such volume that you can’t turn it off. Well I can, because it’s so convenient to fire it up again.

** INSIDE BASEBALL **

As I watched this season, I jotted down great moments. Here are my top moments from season three. If you don’t watch the show, this post and these moments are meaningless or contain PLOT KILLERS, so you may want to leave. Sorry.

Episode three:

Well, McNulty’s here in spirit anyway.

Pryzbylewski, referencing Kima and some surly comments she made about shifting the focus from Barksdale drugs to homicide. It was just a simple comment, similar to what the funny person said at your staff meeting this morning, but it came from a virtual recluse with some personality problems.

Episode four:

You put fire to everything you touch McNulty then you walk away while it burns.

Lester. It needs no explanation.

Episode five:

Is you takin’ notes?

On a criminal $*&#ing conspiracy.

Stringer, who’s putting his MBA to work. He’s running a strategy session with local drug lords in a hotel conference room. He has coffee in the back and is using Robert’s Rules of Order, so one of his henchman figured he should take the minutes. Stringer reacted appropriately.

Episode six:

The Bunk speech to Omar. Blew me away.

Episode eight:

The talk between Rhianna and McNulty with 22 minutes left about D’Angelo’s suicide. Intense.

Then there’s Stringer’s death. I’m not sure what to make of it. McNulty’s reaction and the path it sets him on seem to bode a distinctly different type of show for season four. Is the Marlow/Barksdale story line dead? Are we going to have more political intrigue versus gritty street crime?

We’ll see.

The folks at 37signals have some great software. They also throw up a lot of good content on their blog. I saw this article on data analytics and it resonated with me. Noah has a few great tips for any budding data analytics expert.

I help clients build a lot of spreadsheets for analytical purposes. However, my clients are finance and accounting types working for business enterprises, so they rarely think of things from a data analytics perspective. It’s not my default position either, but as financial analysts we are uniquely situated to bring this skill to the table.

Most financial people realize their purview ranges way beyond the financial statements and the annual audit. They love to be involved in the strategic side of things and they’re always ready for getting their hands dirty with some serious performance management. But sometimes they’re not well-versed in many of the simple tools in MS Office that can be used for analyzing rows and columns of data. This type of data requires a specialized set of tools since it is not as refined as the trial balance and general ledger data that financial people are used to.

I fall into this trap also, but I’ve made a serious effort over the last decade to learn Microsoft Access and understand the tools that Microsoft Excel has to help make sense of this stuff. My feeling is that every finance person needs to think of themselves as being in the business of data analytics. They should be excited when they get a text file with two years of production data or get a data table with general ledger detail dumped into it. Getting actionable information out of this data should be second nature, much like analyzing the variances between this year and last year is.

The start is Pivot Tables. Nothing can help a finance person make sense of raw data more efficiently than Pivot Tables. But we’re not rooting through Pivot Tables now. Please just take a read on Noah’s three tips to wet your appetite for analyzing some data.

I was especially struck by his statement that you should “Memorize your database schema.” This also applies to doing some heavy data analysis in Excel. I know I’ve really gotten in tune with my data when I can just type a quick reference from memory in an Excel formula without having to find it in another sheet and point to it. That’s analytical nirvana, at least for a finance nerd like myself.

We’ll revisit Pivot Tables and this topic frequently as we learn (together) how to round out our financial skill set with a solid base of data analytics.

I’m getting concerned that I may have a full-on movie addiction. For the second night in a row I’ve spent ninety minutes (that I’ll never get back) watching a flick on the free hotel HBO. Oh I had grand plans; in order, I was going to get back to the room, get a workout in, grab a light snack from the Courtyard by Marriott lobby bar, and catch up on emails.

Well, at least I made it through the workout.

We’ll get to the movie in a little bit, but I first I need to talk about old age. Remember that article a few weeks ago about cognitive loss starting at 45? So do I (even though I’m surprised I didn’t forget about it already). Well, I think a bigger concern for us in that 45+ age bracket is loss of the ability to focus.

At least for me it is, I can’t focus for extended periods of time like I used to. I don’t feel like my ability to reason or analyze is any worse off, but my brain fries much quicker. Once I hit about ten hours of work, I have a precipitous drop-off in my ability to stay engaged in anything. During the last two days, I’ve worked consecutive twelve-plus hour days. Coming home and working out and eating healthy and checking emails was a pipe dream.

Enter Black Swan.

So yes, I’m watching movies at a much faster clip than in the past, but this consecutive night movie-watching thing isn’t an addiction as much as it is a tired brain looking for some relief.

That’s what I’m going with, for now.

Black Swan suffered from some very high expectations on my part. I wanted to see it when it came out a year or so ago, but nobody wanted to go with me, so I was fired up when I noticed it on the little HBO guide sitting next to the TV.

It was decent. I was engrossed and held in rapt attention, but I struggled with some things.

I didn’t like Portman’s character Nina. She was always crying and mumbling and never seemed to shake out of her reverie. I expected her to be insecure and meek I guess, as the white swan, but I figured she’d be a little stronger character. And when she did rise up and stand up for herself, it wasn’t in a manner fitting for such an accomplished artist. It just didn’t sit right.

Maybe that’s the point, that she was insane and that’s how insane people act. That she didn’t know which swan was real. Okay, I’ll accept that. Her insane delusions made for a horror movie dynamic without it actually being a horror movie, which was cool. I couldn’t turn it off, but not necessarily because I was enjoying myself, more so because I was anxious. It did a great job as a thriller, for sure.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

The ending didn’t blow me away really. I wasn’t surprised when she died, but maybe nobody was. Was the surprise supposed to be how she died, after dancing the perfect white swan/black swan combination? Not sure I bought off on that completely, by killing herself before the actual fall (jump into the lake, whatever), it really wasn’t perfect was it? The fall should have killed her.

Ah, I’m sorry to nitpick. Alas, this was probably the wrong movie to watch with a fried brain because it makes you think.