Today is Billy Crudup’s birthday. Also, Graham Jones, guitarist from Haircut 100. Kevin Bacon, Wolfgang Puck, Billy Eckstine, Beck and Nelson Rockefeller.

And me.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a rare full-frontal shot of Daughter and I on the roof of the Met at the Big Bambú exhibit. Just so you know who you’re dealing with.

Yeah, that’s my man-purse. I got it for free from Kenneth Cole. You got a problem with that?

We like to take the girls to the local thoroughbred track a few times over the course of the racing season. Monmouth Park (The Shore’s Greatest Stretch) is actually a pretty big deal in the racing community. The Breeder’s Cup is held there on a regular basis.

Horse people are an economically diverse bunch. They’re either hat people or track people. The hat people own horses. The well-heeled wives wear wide-brimmed hats, smile big toothy grins, and greet one another with air kisses. Some [actually, many] are cosmetically enhanced. The husbands wear pastel jackets and pinky rings. They seem to be a happy bunch. They sit in the clubhouse. We don’t ever sit in the clubhouse, so the only time we ever see hat people, is when they come down from their lofty perch to have their photos taken in the winner’s circle with the jockey and the horse.

We’ll usually sit outside with the track people. Track people are grinders. They are there to make money. So are the owners, of course, but the track people seem to need it a hell of a lot more than the hat people.

There’s a thread that runs through track people that ties them all together. There is a common element. Aside from horses and $2 bets, they have an affinity for the drink.

(This one was a loser. They all were.)

Some of them drink beer for breakfast. I don’t think this guy is kidding.

That’s his son playing in the dirt. I’ll bet he’d like some attention from dear old dad. I wouldn’t say I was anti-alcohol but, like organized religion, it should be used in moderation. Too much of either is a bad thing.

This is the tattoo du jour. She had the footprints of her newborn tattooed onto her leg. I’ve never seen that before, so she get a point for originality. Seriously. Do you know how difficult it is to do something totally original?

She’ll be four in about three weeks and I realized that that was probably the last time I’ll ever rock her to sleep. She usually goes to bed without a problem and if something is wrong, she’ll call Mrs. Wife. So that was it. I’ll never rock her to sleep again. I haven’t rocked 8-Year Old to sleep for years and years. I can’t remember that last time I did. It just slipped away without my noticing. Nothing last forever. Not the good stuff and, thankfully, not the bad stuff either.

Spent some time feeling inferior
Standing in front of my mirror

Every Picture Tells as Story
Rod Stewart

For the past two months I’ve been employed as a consultant at a financial institution doing what I’ve always done—slaving over a hot Mac designing marketing material and print collateral for new business development. It’s certainly not the most creative way to spend the day (that would be Mapstew), but it’s decent enough and it allows me to live a fairly comfortable existence—especially for someone with my amount of university-level education (which is to say, none).

The stuff I produce is intended for institutional investors. Pension funds. Endowments and foundations. Union funds. City and municipal funds. SOMEONE has to manage all that money that’s sitting around!

My current gig, however, is something new for me. The material I design is for the private banking sector. Not faceless institutions, but people with an astonishing amount of personal wealth. These people are called High Net Worth individuals. Old family money. Executives with 7+ figure bonuses every year. But it doesn’t end there. There’s a category above that. They’re called (and I’m not kidding about this) Ultra High Net Worth individuals. This job has given me a peek into a rarefied world that you and I can only dream of. And it hasn’t been good for my sense of accomplishment or self.

Here’s a section of a proposal that address the healthcare services available:

The United States offers arguably the best healthcare in the world. Paradoxically, many times that does not result in finding and receiving the best care, even for people with the means to pay for the latest treatments and with philanthropic relationships to top hospitals.

The audience for this material is people who have had entire hospital wings named after them. But this is the part of the proposal that laid me flat:

[You will receive] 24-hour access to your own advisory team, objective data on the best physicians and treatment options, expedited access to care, the collection and secure storage of comprehensive medical records for every family member.

My mom didn’t have a very comfortable end and the thing that kept gnawing at my guts throughout her last year was, “If I had more money, I could make things better for her.”

Expedited access to care. That means they never see a waiting room. They step over people like my mother. They don’t share an antiseptic-smelling room with someone who is dying. What if my wife or daughters get sick? Where’s my advisory team for them?

In the back of these brochures are biographies of the investment advisers. I get lost in reading them. Unbelievable accomplishments. Ivy league pedigrees and study abroad. Important associations and a series of capital letters and Roman numerals after their names. The bios for the institutional investors are purely factual. Do you have your Series 7? But in the world of private wealth management, they’re trying to make a personal, one-on-one connection. The bios include the spouse’s name, how many children, hobbies (Sailing. International travel. Fencing.) and important philanthropic work.

I’m not filled with self pity and I’m not fishing for compliments. I don’t think these people are any better than I am. And I certainly don’t think that all Ultra High Net Worth individuals are inherently happy. But I do sit awe of the incredible lives they’ve built. I’ve never had the intellectual capital or, more fatally, the ambition to live that large. How did they do it? I’m sure many of them had advantages that I didn’t, but that’s no excuse. I work pretty hard but the truth is that I never really tried my best. I liked having a lot of time off. I was always just coasting.

I’ve never felt more ordinary and ill equipped to handle the crisis that will inevitably come my way.

For more information, please contact your Family Wealth Director.

I received some horrific news this morning. Someone wrote to say they were unable to enter a comment on my last post. The only reason I blog is for the warm, whorey feeling I get when I read the comments. And, let’s face it, what’s better about blogging than the party going on in the comments section? Not much.

So I hope it’s just a temporary glitch and not something that’s been taken away from me permanently. How dare they. How dare they introduce this satisfying, albeit trite, thing into my otherwise humdrum life and then deprive me of it. If I weren’t so damn lazy I’d tuck my tail between my legs and head over to WordPress.

“It can get a little boring,” he said softly over coffee at the Four Seasons hotel here…
Actor Robert Patterson on fame in a June 20th New York Times fluff piece titled His Cross to Bear.

Oh, boy. Here we go again. I got a Slowly I Turned* moment first thing on a Monday morning. Longtime readers know that nothing pushes my buttons more than listening to someone complain about their success. The success that they actively pursued, by the way. It’s always some young, 20-something, clueless, dope who has an underdeveloped sense of struggle.

For instance, this Patterson shithead. So. Your popularity is a cross to bear, is it? (Ha-ha. Get it? He plays a vampire.) This morning I took the 5:35 a.m., sat in the middle of a three-seater and the weight-challenged construction workers on either side of me fell asleep and used me as a pillow. By the time I pulled into New York, my thighs were moist from their sweat. They, on the other hand, seemed refreshed. I’ll bet that never happens to people who sip coffee at the Four Seasons.

My favorite example of clueless ingratitude is from boring lite rock droner Nora Jones who was quoted as saying:

“On the first record I was everywhere, and it was, like, the worst time in my life.”

Equally boring one-note actor Michael Cera said:

“I don’t really want to be famous, and I’m kind of scared that might be happening.”

And, finally, Emily Blunt, who starred in the bomb Young Victoria said:

“It’s just never been important to me to make a big splash and I don’t care for it.”

The people who finance your projects will be happy to hear that, Emily. Don’t you want to just smack every one of them upside their empty little heads? I sure do. The last time I did one of these rants I posted an example of how it’s done. Brad Pitt is quoted as saying:

It’s so tough being an actor. Sometimes they bring you coffee and sometimes it’s cold. And sometimes you don’t have a chair to sit on.

See? Isn’t that just so much better?

* “Slowly I Turned” is the most common name associated with a popular vaudeville sketch whereby words are used as the trigger, which then sends the unbalanced person into a state of mania.

I’m actually not much of a ranter but here’s a quick bonus rant.

The Harry Potter Theme Park opened in Orlando last week. Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Gambon were on hand for the ribbon cutting. The success was beyond Universal’s wildest imaginations. The wait was SIX HOURS just to get IN! They interviewed some guests as they exited the Park and here’s my favorite quote:

Blythe Passantino, 21, followed with a tearful admission of her own: “I really wanted to live here; it was so much better than our real lives.”

Doesn’t that sound terribly childish for a 21-year old? Our real lives should be like a theme park? Parenting fail.

Good morning, everyone! Welcome to the working week!