Farewell to the Captain, Hello to Tradition

Every once in a while the stars align. An opportunity arises. A chance to not only right a wrong, but to create a memory and to set things aright all in one. Every once in a while.

Remember your first major league baseball game? Yankees Orioles in the Bronx. 1987. I was 10. Eddie Murray went yard to right field to win it for the O's. I sat up in the upper deck of the old Yankee Stadium along the first baseline. I still smell the cigars along River Avenue.

I attended that game with a then distant friend of the family, not my dad or anyone else who could walk me through the game, the Stadium, the lore, the history. I just remember the sights, the smells. No audio.

This fall, though, I got a chance to set things right for the next generation. By a luck of the draw I had tickets to the second to last regular season home game in the Bronx this year. Derek Jeter's second to last home game at the Stadium before he retires. I chose to take my two year old nephew. It was his first game.

We took the subway up so he could get a feel for the fans, for the pre-game chatter, and the ritual and rhythm of mass transit. We listened to the Bleacher Creatures so he could hear the roll call. As each player responded to the crowd I filled him in on their position, their season, and their place in Yankee history. This introduced him to the second most important cheer he learned that day: DER-EK JE-TER.

Next to thunder, my nephew's never heard anything so sonorous as the Jeter chant. And next to his family, he's never heard anything so full of love, admiration, adulation, and gratitude.

It's times like these that I curse the new Stadium and it's solid structure. In Game 1 of the 2006 ALDS against Detroit I witnessed Jeter go five-for-five with a home run in a winning effort (remember that, Harris?). By his fifth at-bat the chant was so pervasive that the lower deck shook. I have never been so delightfully afraid. [The old Stadium, like Venice, used to open up to fans the way St Mark's Square unveils La Serenissima - the tunnels from the entrance down to the field giving way to what Bart Giamatti referred to as the Green Fields of the mind - that oasis of green amid the concrete jungle.]

Between at-bats we walked around the stadium so he could see the field from different angles. He heard the Voice of God, Bob Sheppard, before he too posthumously retired. I pointed out the area behind third base where Jeter dove into the stands against Boston (remember that, Batters?), the gap between first and second where he tied Gehrig (remember that, Javy?), the lower deck in right field where he became Mr November and the city of New York cried in catharsis after 9/11.

After a long day through three boroughs, the kid nodded off in the middle innings, but I like to think the sounds of the crowd, the smells of the park, and the ambiance of the moment have baptized him in baseball. I'm just glad I got to take him to his first game. May this tradition continue.

In a Flash

hortly after mentioning how I planned to write 28 pieces of flash fiction in 28 days, I heard from friends who wanted in. Kinda. They had half-baked stories that they could no longer look at. They needed fresh eyes. Considering the authors and the subjects, I said send them my way.

The stories hit all of life's important subjects; religion, politics, sex, ideas and baseball with each writer honing in on one theme from unique angles. Many currently read like essays in need of story and character development. There are a lot of broad strokes, but more so, there are a lot of daring ideas to flesh out and bring to life.

It'll be fun editing a collection of their work.

Hooey Savvy Update: Would you take advice from someone who wasn't an expert in their field? To this end, I'm taking steps to make myself an expert in financial education.

First, I've taken preliminary steps to work with non-profits specializing in homeless affairs. Why? Because I want to know what the homeless wish they could've known about personal finance. If I don't address issues that frustrated those in extreme poverty, Hooey will be just that: hooey. I've also reached out to the academic field, specifically behavioral economics, with the hopes of running a survey/study this fall. I want to make sure what I'm advising works in line with how people learn and make financial decisions.

I don't believe that Hooey will make everyone's lives better, but I do believe there are a number of concrete steps I can take to make it the best product possible. Hopefully, working with the homeless and running this academic survey/study will bring Hooey closer to that goal.

Flash

aving spent a few years writing a novel, several months writing children's books on financial education, and turning out screenplay drafts in 20 days, the amount of time spent writing in proportion to the value of one's time comes into question. How much time do one's spend on a project? In cooking, as they say, a dish is done when it's done. Then again, how many dishes take three years?

While working on longer projects ideas for others pile up and collect dust.

Enough.

To kill two birds with one stone, I've decided to tackle 28 different story lines in the next 28 days. Each story will be a piece of flash fiction (ie, short stories of less than a thousand words, approximately four pages at the most). The shorter length should also cut down editing time. In the end, it should make for a novella.

Heartbreaker

t breaks your heart," Bart Giamatti wrote about baseball. If that's what he thought about baseball, I don't even want to know what he'd call the emotional roller coaster and agony of March Madness.

A vast majority of major league baseball fans will never get to know the team's stars, the parents of those stars or the team's manager. Rather, we admire from afar day after day, year after year, referring to the players by their first names as if we knew them.

With the exception of the occasional one game playoff, rarely does the season break one's heart in a swing. There are playoff series. Best of five. Best of seven. It's a slow burn before it goes cold for the winter.

College basketball? The NCAA tournament is win or go home. One minute you think you're moving on to the next round, the next you're canceling your hotel room for the rest of the weekend. Now you're hot, now you're done.

And then there is Davidson College basketball. Unlike the Kentuckys, the Carolinas, and the UCLAs, we lived on the same halls as our players, went to class with them in Chambers, and ate with them at the Commons. We're classmates.

Coach McKillop may as well tack on professor, alumni relations, development and career services to his title. He never forgets a name, a face or a conversation he's had with you and he makes himself available after every home win at the Brickhouse Tavern in Davidson for a beer. Where else can you do that?

We know our players. We know their parents. We know our coach. We're not fans, we're family. Hell, we don't even have fans who aren't directly affiliated with the college. At least, that's what I thought.

So while you would think that Davidson's 59-58 loss to Marquette on Thursday would have broke my heart as I stood in attendance at Rupp Arena, it did not. No, that happened well before Marquette's last basket. In fact, it happened before the game even started.

At the tail end of the Butler-Bucknell game, prior to the start of the Davidson game, I met Richard. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Richard drove to Lexington, Kentucky for the game wearing his #30 Steph Curry Davidson jersey. He was alone and he was squatting the seat next to mine. I asked him his affiliation to Davidson.

He wasn't a student. He wasn't an alum. He had no direct connection to the small school from outside Charlotte, North Carolina. He had seen Davidson play in Detroit at Ford Field five years earlier. Ever since then, he said, he had followed the team. He was, by far, the most hyped fan in my immediate vicinity. He knew the team well, more importantly he said he followed Davidson because he loved its fans, how passionate they are and how personal an experience it is. He had only one question:

"Do Davidson fans still sing 'Sweet Caroline'?"

I smiled and nodded. That broke my heart. I had a lump in my throat the rest of the day.

Fans believe in their teams. The Davidson family believes in what Davidson stands for; Trust, Care, Commitment. The basketball program is simply an extension of a campus-wide phenomenon.

So congratulations to Marquette for defeating Davidson and advancing to the next round of the NCAA tournament. But when it comes to breaking my heart, Marquette, you come in third behind the categorical altruism of Davidson and the effect it had on a perfect stranger. Welcome to the family, Richard.

Of Love & The Chinese Beer Flower

n the latest screenplay, The Beer Flower Limited, I juxtapose two characters with conflicting philosophies; an American financier who swears by the free market, but sees the affairs of the heart as a monopoly and a Chinese micro-brewer who refuses to mass produce her beer for fear of poor quality, but who claims to love everyone and everything. He derides her ubiquitous hugs and off-the-cuff proclamations of love for one and all as "the Bud Light of Friendship." She mocks his "Unicorn Love Ale" as non-existent.

Who's right? Which of the two values love best?

She fills her love portfolio with friends, family and animals; a healthy diversity of love assets that keep loneliness risk at bay for a steady and modest love yield at the cost of a big love return.

He values love so high that it's an illiquid issue akin to Berkshire Hathaway A stock which he is only willing to purchase when sure it will out-perform the average love market for the long run; a good, all-his-organic-love-eggs-in-one-basket bet...till Warren Buffet meets his maker.

Through the writing of this screenplay and The L-v- Fund earlier this past fall, I've had to think about a subject I haven't thought about seriously in a long time. In so doing, I've asked myself, what's normal? What's not? What's best? What can be learned from the other side of each argument? And what could constitute a compromise?

Using beer, Chinese drinking games and the language of the marketplace for cover, I find a way to discuss how we value love - for better or for worse - in The Beer Flower Limited.

It was a very good year

hen I was 17, my high school French teacher, Dana Danforth, a mentor in style, wit ("If you can't laugh at life, you're fucked.") and facial hair, turned me away from Sinatra before I'd even heard The Voice.

When I was 21, the Smoothest Man Alive, Jiorgis Kritsotakis, introduced me to Puccini (Bergonzi, Tebaldi & Serafin; Callas, De Stefano & De Sabata), Lebanese women, Greek slang and Old Blue Eyes in St Andrews.

And now, at 35, I can say, hell, I can bellow, "It was a very good year."

For it has been a rather good year. Two series of children's books. Three screenplays. New friends in new towns; old friends in old towns; new friends in old towns. Unfinished conversations picked up. The start of a grant writing career. A November moustache. A glass of Brunello on the house. Three welcome homes in three different places.

No, not every bottle poured sweet and clear. The dregs of the past two vintages continue to give this year's a bittersweet finish, but now they are more minor flavor notes, not skunked cans of beer.

More importantly, this is the year I cleared my throat; the year I danced with strangers; the year I filled out.

And yes, Frank, it was also a good year for small town, city and blue-blooded girls...

The Fund

ears ago investment groups started socially responsible investing (SRI). These funds invest solely in companies that have green policies, treat their workers well, practice fair trade and only feed their unicorns whole-wheat Lucky Charms. As of 2010, investors had poured $3.07 trillion into such funds (the global economy for 2011 was $69.99 trillion).

Shortly after SRI appeared so too did not-so SRI. And they called them sin funds. Sin funds invest in tobacco, weapons, alcohol and refuse to invest in any company that does not adhere to strict North Korean labor laws. A fast and loose smart-ass argument could be made that any dollar not in a SRI fund went the other way.

As people put their money where their hearts and beliefs are, this got me thinking about investing as an emotional endeavor. Naturally, I then took emotional investing to an extreme. You know, for fun.

Investors take comfort in products that have been around a long time. Traders make money off of volatility. What's the most volatile emotion that you can think of that's been around forever?

Love.

And so I wrote a screenplay about an investment group that starts a Love Fund and the public's reaction to it.

On Deck: Is love a limited or an unlimited good? A sloppy love story told around the one good Chinese micro-brew.

Skyfall

ne of the few things my Dad and I shared, one of the few things he passed on that I accepted whole-heartedly as a kid, was an affinity for James Bond. It didn't hurt that Bond stories surround the family; how Bond played on the waiting room TV as Pop waited for my birth; how the family who shared my mother's room during my sister's birth were the Goldfingers; how I got my middle name.

Daniel Craig has played Bond since my father's passing in 2007. Pop and I didn't like the look of him as Bond from the get-go. Stocky, brutish, blonde. Where once we had an outside chance of being mistaken for Bond if in a tux spotted at a distance by someone with the eyesight of a retired boxer, now we definitely didn't stand a chance. So it wasn't hard watching Bond movies after Pop passed because the visual connection was lost.

That is, until Skyfall...and the Aston Martin DB5.

I've heard audiences laugh, I've heard audiences scream, but I had never heard an audience oooh until the DB5 appeared to the surprise and delight of a packed house. Hell, I knew it was coming and it still got me. Sure, it took me back to the old Connery movies, but it also took me back to classic car shows Dad and I attended at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut where we'd take Polaroids of each other leaning up against someone else's Aston. When it appeared in Skyfall, I couldn't speak.

But after the movie, all I wanted to do was speak. For the first time in a long time I wanted to call my Dad. I wanted to talk to him about the movie. About what a great job they did bringing back classic characters, cars and the riff to the one song he ever learned how to play on the guitar. Talk to him about Scotland, the Bond exhibit we saw there, the Bond exhibit we missed in NYC the first time he ever took me into the city as a kid only to end up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an exhibit on medieval chivalry. To hear his corny Connery impersonation. That's a Smith and Wesson and you've had your six. And to listen to the former mechanic tell me - once again - that for as beautiful a car as the DB5 was, my Mom's old early '90s Toyota Camry could out-handle it. (The DB5 had no power steering.)

With the exception of the occasional baseball post, I try not to veer too far from this blog's primary focus. But from one aspiring writer to the one who came before, consider this post an epistle in far more legible print than any of the letters either of us ever wrote to each other.

Project Update: Finishing up the third screenplay of the season (no, it's not a prequel to Citizen Kane). Will go for four before New Year's. Reviewing the final layout of Cookie-Wise Pablo.

Confession

ust finished writing the first draft of a Casablanca prequel screenplay.

That is all.

The October Challenge & Black Swan Sandy

ast month I challenged myself to start and finish a screenplay. I can now announce that I have written a complete draft of that screenplay. It will take some revising, but I am, for the most part, content with where it starts and how the story does not stray from its premise. Following an old teacher's advice, I pushed on throughout never stopping to go back. Rather, I kept a list of items to address, flesh out, include and fix which I'll tackle in the second draft.

Up next? Another month, another screenplay. I'm also editing the cognitive psyche kids' stories I wrote. One, pertaining to Black Swans, is particularly apt in light of Hurricane Sandy. Some folks said they didn't evacuate because they had lived in their neighborhoods for decades and had no experience with such a terrible storm and so found it hard to believe such a thing could either exist or do so much damage. They couldn't imagine such a storm because they had no first hand experience with one. It didn't matter what others told them be they meteorologists or folks who had experienced such weather elsewhere; those who had yet to experience such a storm themselves stuck to their pre-existing bias against a storm of such size.

Needless to say, that's a strong and potentially deadly bias. If we can become aware of that bias and loosen the grip we have on it, hopefully we can save some lives and stop making mistakes we seem to repeat generation after generation.

Extra Savvy Sketches + Text

s. Concepcion has successfully updated the first round of sketches for Cookie-Wise Pablo which you can now view below. Also included are the 16 corresponding couplets so it's less of a silent movie without the subtitles.

1) A cookie now or two later?

There may be no question greater.

2) That one right there is so enticing.

But a second one? That's better than icing!

3) "I will wait for two!" Pablo exclaimed. 

"You'll eat that one before I return!" Missy Monkey proclaimed.

4) "I will not!" Pablo disagreed.

"We shall see!" said Missy Monkey.

5) "Then hold this while I get the other.

When I return you can have another."

6) In his hands Pablo held the cookie

which quickly began to drive him kooky. 

7) It felt so soft and smelled so choice

that Pablo's mouth became quite moist.

8) His breathing grew heavy and his eyes grew large.

Where had that monkey gone, to Mars?

9) "I have to do something or the monkey will win!"

Pablo said as he mussed up his hair for inspiration.

10) All the static in his hair created a charge in the air. 

"Eureka! I've got it!" Pablo cheered with flair.

11) "Missy Monkey, two can play this game!"

Putting the cookie down, Pablo just walked away.

12) He walked down the path and he walked up the hill.

He walked by the water and he walked under a windowsill.

13) He walked through the Great Park

he walked and he walked until it got dark.

14) He came to a bench and Missy Monkey,

but wait, hold on, where was the other cookie?

15) "I just couldn't wait!" Missy mumbled

her mouth full of cookie crumbles.

16) "I did!" Pablo said with pride

as animals from the park slipped him Missy's cookies on the sly.

From the Engine Room

his post is the 200th for the Little Engine which first pulled out of the station in December 2007. Started as a way of publicly shaming myself to consistently make progress on whatever literary project I was working on at the time, the Engine continues to chug along allowing me to think through stories, characters, approaches and to push forward.

Every once in a while I check out the Engine's stats. Lately, a few numbers have caught my eye. First, readership is up about 33%. I assume this is either the result of worthy reading, cleverly placed hyperlinks and labels on my part...or what we may refer to as the "Pre-Date Internet Creep Check." Thank you, ladies.

Second, the Engine consistently gets readers from Russia. The Engine's most popular post since it's inception? A piece on Chinese drinking songs. I have reason to believe that the two are directly related.

Third, how do folks find the Engine? More often than not they search my name. There are some, though, who have searched my name + chapstick + poem. This is a very specific search by people who are most likely up to no good; probably even less good than the Russians. I know what they're looking for, but unfortunately for them, it has never appeared in this blog. And, apparently, anywhere else on the internets. Till now.

Here now, from A Midas Spring (2005), the answer to "my name + chapstick + poem", "I'd Smile More, But I Lost My Chapstick":

I'd smile more,
but I lost my chapstick.
I'd say more,
but the corners of my lips are cracked.
I am at the mercy
of tubed petroleum.

Glasses of milk prove deficient
and pacifiers socially so.
Lollipops are a viable alternative.
Your kiss may only add salt to this wound.

I can learn sign language
or I can gesticulate my way through.
But neither
bring the fluency
of a well-greased grin.

For those interested in the beats put down the night 'Chapstick' premiered in the East Village, peep DJ Sleep.

Project Updates: Cookie-Wise Pablo got a second round of sketches which I'll post soon with content and the Any Color You Want screenplay chugs along as it nears its October 31st deadline. All in all, progress.

The Page That Proves I Exist

oments after the Tigers eliminated the Yankees, I sat down to make progress on the Any Color You Want screenplay for the second time today. I wrote about eight lines all of which were about as good as the Yankees' swings at Fister, Sanchez, Verlander and Scherzer. I packed it in early, frustrated and without a good idea of what the next line would be, never mind the next 60 pages.

It's nights like these you'd think I'd consider hanging it up for good. Admittedly, I've been winging it lately with only vague prep done in advance, assuming it'll just come to me - if not in this draft, then in draft number nine. Creative writing, especially longer pieces (90+ pages), risks failure with every line. It is humbling. When done right, I'd argue, it's exhausting.

So why continue?

After watching a rather pale and very bearded dude for a year write from a distance, a beautiful woman once penned a poem that she handed over shortly before we parted ways. In it she included a question that has motivated me ever since. The question? "...and where's the page that proves you exist?" I'd like to think she was not referring to my long form birth certificate.

I write for a number of reasons. Writing allows me to flesh out my thoughts. It's cheaper than therapy. And novel ideas provide a fantastic high. I also write so that one day I can scribble, "The page that proves I exist," in her dedication.

Savvy Sketches

ood news on the Hooey Savvy front: Stephanie Concepcion of Staten Island has submitted her first series of sketches for Cookie-Wise Pablo. Each sketch corresponds with a couplet from the story. In return, I've submitted my thoughts and suggestions to keep the ball rolling. Here's a first look.

O captain! My captain!

eath. Taxes. And the New York Yankees. Three things I can pencil in every year.

When asked why I like baseball, a game some complain is too slow, is boring, doesn't have enough action, I allude to Bart Giamatti's essay, "The Green Fields of the Mind":

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

And:

"Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight."

More than any other sport, baseball mirrors our lives in its dailyness and in its grueling schedule. We wake up, go to work and return home in the same way baseball players run out to their positions inning after inning, day after day and return home afterward. More than any other sport, the fans can identify with the players' long season and not only wish them success, but survival through one year to the next. The game's parallel existence mirrors our own continued existence.

Fans of all baseball teams are free to claim this parallel. Few fans, though, can make a claim for immortality through their teams. Every year teams such as the Cubs, the Red Sox and the Yankees stay in the same location and wear the same uniforms they extend their lives past the lengths of our own. And in the same vein as "you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy to not get eaten", anything older than you or your direct memory is that much closer to immortality.

A few years ago Brian Cashman, the general manager of the Yankees said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Our fans count on the Yankees on a daily basis." I understood that to mean a few things. First, no matter how crappy our day, the Yankees will end it well. Second, no matter how unfair the day, the Yankees will play the game the right way and in winning, will (in a very small and personal way) level the scales of justice. Third, no matter how tempting the short cut, the high standard of the Yankees  -and their subsequent success - will give us something to emulate.

Cashman spoke of the entire franchise, but he could have been speaking about just one player: Derek Sanderson Jeter.

The Captain injured his ankle last night and it seems he will miss the rest of the playoffs. Saying he will be missed is an understatement. I refuse to write his eulogy today: That's like making his Yankeeography in 2002 (which they did) as there's more to come.

Some may argue that the Yankees and their fans have hit Giamatti's "stop." Even Whitman's poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" does not end well for its leader. Nor did it for Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society who also invoked Uncle Walt. But rather than sulk in loss, Keating's students atop desks picked up the mantle of captain, each of their own ship.

No, the game continues. And last I checked, the Stadium is still in the Bronx and the Yankees still wear pinstripes. Jeter will play another day. The Yankees will play today.

Thank you, Bobby

ver 13 years ago, shortly before walking across the stage, I ran into my college president, Bobby Vagt, and asked him what I had to offer a world that, in 1999, seemed to be doing just fine. In fact, unemployment was so low that even a year later the New York Times ran a piece about a community that's unemployment rate was so low that they'd taken to hiring ex-cons and...wait for it...liberal arts grads.

Without missing a beat, Bobby told me, "You know how to read, to write and to communicate." I didn't take much solace in those words at the time. I mean, the literacy rate in the U.S. is pretty high and, to some, grunting is a valid form of communication. Everyone knows how to do those things I thought.

No matter what my occupation has been over the years, I've continued to write on my own year by year putting together a portfolio of work while also continuing to read and to communicate what's on my mind be it in English, Spanish or New Yorkese.

Having dealt with people older and younger than myself, from different experiences and places and of different education levels, I've come to understand what the president meant that day: He meant that most people do not know how to read insightfully, to write clearly and to communicate consistently and clearly.

The other day I met with the president of a non-profit consultancy looking for a grant-writer. He bemoaned the lack of good writers out there. I smiled and thought of Bobby. Today I formally accepted their offer to be a grant writer.

If I've learned anything of the years (other than never to doubt Brian Cashman), it's that those who stick with something, who are not distracted and who make progress everyday are those who will most likely achieve their goals. In a small way, this new position is a testament to that.

And now...Game 4 of the ALDS. Go Yanks!

The Hot Stove

etting definitive goals over a short period of time coupled with a healthy dose of self-bullying has worked well for my literary output historically. Which leads us to my latest challenge: 112 scenes by November 1st or the end of the World Series (whichever comes last), in other words, approximately five scenes a day.

Because I take literary criticism about as well as first time mothers take backhanded compliments about their newborns, sometimes it takes a while to admit the criticism is spot on and I need to change my baby, if you will.

And so I am. The first 14 pages of the screenplay for Any Color You Want (ACYW) stays; the next 88 go to the recycling bin along with a number of characters that I enjoyed creating, scenes I enjoyed writing and a story I enjoyed working on for a few years.

In comes the characters, scenes and story I should have written the first time around instead of taking a more round-about route. While the round-about route made for a good story, by avoiding the question I laid out early on ("How would locals react to foreigners setting up a Peace Corps office in the U.S.?" or, "Can we ever accept foreign help?") I also avoided the hallmark of good dramatic writing: vigorously rubbing conflicting characters and ideas directly against each other and enjoying the sparks.

If you groaned when you saw the ACYW acronym, thinking perhaps, perchance!, I'd finally laid it to rest, well, you're not alone. Part of me groaned too. But think about this: Knows all those bands that had killer first albums and dud sophomore efforts shortly thereafter? They just burst on the scene, right? Came out of nowhere with this great material, right? Nah. Chances are they'd been playing that first album for years before anyone knew who they were. That crappy second album? That's their record label rushing them to put something out to capitalize on their popularity.

Has ACYW been on the stove for a while? You bet it has. It just needs to reduce some more. You can't hurry a good stock.

Progress Report: Cookie-Wise Pablo is with the illustrator! The Boston Squeeze is on the back burner till I hit the depths of winter and get the itch to grab Bull Durham or The Bad News Bears  before pitchers and catchers report. The series of seven kids books I wrote a few weeks ago? Still on ice. And then there's another screenplay in the works that's either blasphemous or wicked awesome. Hopefully both. But that's for another time. As you can see, I take writing a lot like baking: One project in the oven, one on the rack cooling, one setting up in the fridge, another on the table waiting to be placed out while I nibble on the works of others keeping my taste buds sharp.

What We're Doing Here

n the spring of 2009, a friend introduced me to chardonnay from California's Russian River Valley. I immediately had a favorite new beverage. I can only liken its buttery flavor to Rat's description of Bean's Apple Cider from The Fantastic Mr Fox as "liquid gold." Shortly thereafter, an adamant East Coaster began planning my his first trip to the West Coast.

A month before the trip, almost exactly a year later, I asked friends in the NYC fine dining world where to eat. Everyone had their favorite spots and old haunts. Cyrus, a contemporary French restaurant in Healdsburg, California, came up more than once. I made the reservation and thought nothing more of it.

Coming from NYC and from what was at the time the Best New Restaurant in America (Marea) according to James Beard, I thought I knew what fine dining was. I thought I had been to the top of that mountain. Thankfully, I was very wrong.

My three hour, 17 course meal at Cyrus was the greatest dining experience of my life. It was such a complete experience (they even gave me a copy of my menu as a memento), that I sent them a handwritten thank you note when I returned home.

To my friends from the Michael White days, no disrespect. My meals at Alto, Convivio, Marea, Osteria Morini and Ai Fiori were akin to eating with family and as such, hold a very special place.

Cyrus made their intentions crystal clear from the moment I sat down. Repeatedly, throughout the course of the evening, servers, sommeliers et al would bring me something and say, "We want to show you what we're doing here." Through a 17 course charm offensive, they quite effectively put me in my place.

In San Francisco days before, I had learned that city chefs liked to put fresh, local, organic produce on one's plate quite satisfied with themselves. That wasn't enough at Cyrus. At Cyrus, that's where the dish began. Then they showed you what they could do with that fresh, local, organic produce. Course after course after course.

For far too long my rule was: The only greens I eat are M&Ms. To be fair, they knew I was coming in and where I was coming from. It would have been very poor form not to clean my plate. But at Cyrus, Chef Douglas Keane got me to eat things I would have never tried otherwise. Chef Keane could have told me it was car tire reduced in Drano and I would have lapped it up.

Sadly, Cyrus is closing its doors on October 29th. Not only are we losing a great restaurant led by a great chef, but we're losing Nick Peyton, Cyrus' co-owner (with Chef Keane) and de facto maître d' par excellence. The man should run a school on how to run a joint. He makes Rick Blaine look like a bumbling amateur.

Before I even left the table that night I had learned something important: I had learned how far I had come as a cook at Marea, but I also knew how much further Marea and I had to go to reach Cyrus' level. I may no longer cook professionally, but I can appreciate majestic mountains such as Cyrus and the challenge of climbing to their peak.

7 Up, 7 Down

irst drafts of seven children's books in seven days are complete. The books are
based on the findings of a cognitive psychology study (previously cited) that I believe has the potential to improve financial decision making through better awareness of common biases we unconsciously employ daily.

The findings I chose to focus on pertain to biases of availability (the ease with which examples of the event come to mind), hindsight biases after Black Swans (eg, banning box-cutters on planes after 9/11), motivation to prevent Black Swans, the conjunction fallacy (people tend to think a story more probable with each bit of additional detail it has than less probable), and "anchoring, adjustment and contamination" (eg, deciding to buy one item at the store not ten of that item because there's a special or the store is about to close) - among others.

The seven books will sit on ice for a month then I'll look at them again with fresh eyes and work them over a second time. And then a third before submitting them to peer review and the harshest critics - kids.

Writing these books as 16 rhyming couplets forced me to keep them lean and to keep the action up. Originally, I thought writing in this fashion would lead to more dumbed down material with a watered-down story, but I think I've avoided that by keeping the stories in line.

On Deck: While I prefer writing about baseball during the off-season, I've challenged myself to finish a draft of The Boston Squeeze by the end of this calendar year. Batter up.

And now for my next trick...

ears ago friends introduced me to the work of German painter Gerhard Richter. Richter often layers paint which he then scrapes away at giving the piece a third dimension. What I like about Richter's approach is how he literally digs deeper.

In carving up my tome of a children's book on financial education, I settled on a single story that transcends financial education. This made me wonder - have I dug deep enough or have I just scratched the surface?

The depth of my exploration of this topic became particularly clear as I read Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Make that the book's afterword. For as good as the book is, the afterword is even better because of Ferguson's discussion of cognitive psychology - particularly our ability to avoid biases such as overestimating success and underestimating risk and failure - and its impact on our ability to make good financial decisions on a daily basis. 

Question is, how many of us will ever read Ferguson's afterword? How many will read the 26 page study by Eliezer Yudkowsky that the afterword is based on? 10% of the population? 1%? How many of us have read all our email? Exactly.

In the last few years Rockabye Baby! started putting out albums called "Lullaby Renditions of..." various musical artists. They've done Radiohead, Bob Marley, Adele, Journey, Kanye West and many more. In each case they replace vocals with xylophones and other kid-friendly instrumentals. These renditions did for pop music what Baby Einstein did for classical music.

Yudkowsky's study discusses eight points in particular that are just as interesting as the findings of the marshmallow test. In a series I'm simply calling, "Big Ideas, Little Books," I will now for my next trick write a 32 page children's book for each of the eight ideas discussed in the study. And I will write them all in the next eight days. If DiMaggio can get a hit in 56 straight, I can write 16 rhyming couplets for eight days straight.