Matisyahu

My next obsession, I think, will be Matisyahu - the orthodox/lubavitch hiphop/reggae artist and nominee at the 2007 grammy awards. I must be jumping on the bandwagon pretty late, because there's a fully-formed wikipedia page.

I'm not as yet fully convinced by the Message in a Bottle cover, but Jerusalem rocks.

See official website here.

And some more Rachel

I've had a pretty crappy few days; perhaps a few more Rachel pictures will improve things a little

Revisiting Miller's Crossing

Watched Miller's Crossing the other day for the first time in years. Like a few other films I loved then left for years (eg. Blue Velvet) it is even better than I remember it... and Gabriel Byrne is simply incredible. The film that showed me the true talent of the Coen Brothers.

Intricately plotted - and it all makes perfect sense at the end (so long as you pay attention). Fantastic minor characters (and character actors). A cool anti-hero. A film set in the prohibition era, confronting issues of racism and homosexuality. A sexy femme fatale who screams trouble. Awesome dialogue. I could say plenty more but duty calls.

Just because

It's been too long since I posted a Rachel Bilson picture

Allen keys and more

As I sit on my couch typing, M is putting together a large, expensive floor lamp which was a wedding present. She is complaining a little, but I know she loves putting things together - it is in her genes as a third-generation engineer. Whilst as a lawyer I am pretty happy watching her do it and making witty / annoying comments.

In recent years I've watched many items of furniture being assembled; it is clear that we live in an Ikea world - even if we never actually buy anything from Ikea.

It is virtually impossible to buy any large item without [sorry for the interruption - I just had to go hold the lamp while M screwed something in] having to do most of the assembly work yourself (or, in my case, sitting around while your wife does most of the work).

A combination of European design and Chinese workmanship ensures hours of fun for the whole family... so long as you have the right Allen key.

A painful field of expertise

As someone who has broken ribs on three separate occasions, I can definitively state that it hurts. Quite a lot. And everything is sort of harder for a few weeks. And sneezing really sucks.

This time I don't even have a good story.

The first time: go-karting at Mike's bucks party
The second time: whilst having sex

This time: tripped over at home while thinking about work and fell onto an outdoor umbrella stand.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg's money machine

There's power in that name. The man, Michael Bloomberg, runs New York City and may have even grander ambitions. The company, Bloomberg LP, is a prodigious success and just keeps getting stronger.


Fascinating article on Bloomberg LP from Fortune... the company is an absolute powerhouse as a leader in the financial information oligopoly - a pretty good place to be!

Assuming operating profits are indeed $1.5 billion, and assuming also that terminal sales will keep rising - there was a gain of 26,000 in 2006 - a price of $20 billion might be not only possible but close to a floor. Amounts above that seem entirely feasible.
And even at $20 billion, Mike Bloomberg's stake would be worth more than $13 billion - which is a far sight above the $5.5 billion that Forbes has just accorded the mayor in its billionaires' list

When a customer buys a standard Bloomberg Professional subscription he enters into a two-year contract, paying quarterly in advance. If the customer has just one Bloomberg, the rate is $1,800 per month. If he has multiple Bloombergs, which is overwhelmingly the case, the charge is $1,500 for each. Should the customer want Bloomberg to, for example, effect equity trades or supply flat-panel screens, there are additional charges; real-time stock prices are among the other items that cost extra.

An unusual element of this pricing structure - and a pillar of the business model - is that Bloomberg absolutely will not provide volume discounts. The monthly price if you have two Bloombergs is $1,500 for each; the price if you have 2,000 Bloombergs is $1,500 each. Neither can you buy only a portion of Bloomberg's data. It's the whole megillah or nothing.

Facebook

Excellent blog post / article / meta-article about Facebook on the Fastcompany website.

A few extracts:

a billion dollars (allegedly) is a lot of money. But specifically for businesses that live on the web, memories from the bubble of yesterdecade – epic stories of overvaluation and excess, business plans on backs-of-napkins, etc – have taken on powerful second lives as punch lines and cautionary tales. Hey: Lesser mortals, even well-meaning ones, have blown through investor money only to end up as occasional entries in “where are they now” columns. Or worse. And we all love the smell of schadenfraude in the morning. I mean, come on.

Facebook investor Peter Thiel put it this way - “The strange boom/bust cycle in the late ‘90s is a big part of things here. Most people who lived through that remember the bust more than they remember the boom. That distorts a lot of thinking.” (I lived through it, and he’s right.) His bigger point is that Zuckerberg’s youth works in his favor – he’s less likely to be haunted by a specter of imminent market meltdown and stay focused on building something worthwhile.

You'll all recall Peter Thiel of course - founder of X.com / Paypal and superstar hedge fund investor / space nut.

although I suppose it’s possible that Facebook could seriously screw things up, I’m inclined to believe that they are up to the task. This is a pretty smart group – 200 strong - who think very deeply about what, how and why they do what they do. And as any weary Web 1.0 survivor can tell you, a company that is ramping up for the sole purpose of selling itself off to the highest bidder has a very specific feel to it

Truer words were neve spoke

Meanwhile, the main Fast Company article about Facebook is here - I will post about it later

A long week

(almost) the end of a very long week - running 3 cases in a week is exhausting...

wedding photos

Anyone not already overdosed on the M&T wedding is welcome to check out a fairly random selection of photos posted up on photobucket.

A very proud moment

Just checked out the photos Lucas posted of my bucks night... Am very very proud to report that one of the photos has been deleted for violating Photobucket's terms of service.

Wow, it must have been an even better night than I remember.

How can I be the last person to blog about it? It was my f*n wedding!

Since writing my last post, I've become aware that both Lucas and Emilie have blogged (at length) about my wedding last weekend.

Lucas' post has its charms - I enjoyed the reprint of his speech - but Emilie's post is by far the better of the two, as it contains absolutely no snarky comments or allegations of totalitarian repression.

In fact I think it is worth reprinting a few short extracts from Emilie's post:

M was escorted through the gardens to the Chuppah by her parents.
Her dress was divine.
It was a golden cream sheath that had gold glass beading with thick straps.
The veil and the material of the Chuppah echoed each other.
It really was a golden experience.
The bride and groom were smiling and so was every single guest.

T and M are so different
She's a really out-doorsy engineer who'd traveled all over the world in a hardcore kind of a way and is really into things like sky-diving, rock climbing and black water kayaking
T is a Barrister, uber-educated gentle person who is into interesting things like Korean cinema.
He's a top guy.
And I love that they thrive on each other’s differences and are eager to learn, understand and experience each other’s passions.
They are a perfect human compliment.

What a great wedding!

T has restored my faith that not all Jewish boys in Melbourne are complete knobs!

In case anyone's curious, both Emilie and Lucas have included a few photos of the wedding.

The big day

M & I were married last Sunday 18 March 2007 at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, under a big old gum tree in front of the lake. It was a perfect day and a perfect location.

The wedding was followed by an (awesome) celebration at the Observatory Cafe at the Gardens... dancing the hora, a bbq dinner, various funny & short speeches, drinking, more dancing, a Swollen Members track, then back to our house with about 20 friends to keep partying ... we had a great night and I hope those of my readers who joined us for the wedding and celebrations did too.

And we followed this up with a few days in Red Hill, which was great. Lots of relaxing, a hike along the Two Bays track and a spectacular private picnic at Montalto winery.

More wedding minutiae to follow, including possibly some photos and an edited extract of my speech.

Goodwill

BB has today posted on the Google acquisition of Youtube and the much-hyped 'fact' that the acquisition was on a price/revenue multiple of 100.

A few thoughts:
- I am surprised the multiple isn't higher... youtube would at the time of acquisition have been generating f-all revenue... it clearly wasn't bought on the basis of present revenue, but on the basis of its clear leadership of a segment in which google would consider itself the natural leader
- it is inconceivable that the price/revenue multiple would have been the deciding factor (or even a relevant factor) in determining the purchase price or the valuation. a very early stage (almost pre-revenue) company like youtube can only really be valued on the basis of its potential or else on raw belief / hype... multiples of any kind are largely meaningless
- BB writes that $1.2b of the purchase price is assigned to goodwill. From my M&A experience, 'goodwill' is that part of the purchase price that doesn't fit anywhere else... you can't fairly call it a tangible asset (eg. a computer, a chair) or an identifiable intangible asset (eg. the copyright in a software program, a trade mark). Although of course I do not hold myself out as an expert on accounting for intangibles under US accounting rules.

The Host

Great review from the New York Times of my favourite movie of 2006

It Came From the River, Hungry for Humans (Burp)

The plug-ugly monster that jumps out of a city river in “The Host” to scoop up and chomp down on those unlucky enough to cross its path — men, women, a whip-smart 13-year-old girl named Hyun-seo — looks like something you might find lurking at the bottom of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or trolling the depths of a murky restaurant aquarium in the middle of a toxic dump. Blink and it looks like something that slimed out of the sea in a creationist nightmare.

It would have to be an awfully big aquarium, as it happens, because this fishy creature, this mystery from the deep with the gulping petaled mouth and prehensile tail is the size of a school bus and restless to boot. It rushes underwater and races over ground, its sturdy little legs churning turf. Every so often it spirals into a back flip as gracefully as a prepubescent Romanian gymnast or drops into the water like a knife, scoring a perfect-10 dive. It’s as ugly as sin, this thing, but it has style to burn. As does this film, a loopy, feverishly imaginative genre hybrid from the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, about the demons that haunt us from without and within.

By turns a carnival of horrors and a family melodrama (variations on the same theme), “The Host” is also a rethink of those 1950s cine-quickies in which mondo ants, locusts, wasps, crabs and snails and one seriously ticked off amphibious reptile go on the rampage, visiting punishment on a hapless, guilty humanity. Like Godzilla (Gojira in the original Japanese), some of these mutants were born under a mushroom cloud; others were hatched in the B-movie hothouse of box-office opportunism. The creature running amok in “The Host,” meanwhile, was spawned by a 37-year-old South Korean who has spent his entire life in the shadow of the American military presence. No wonder the bad guys look like character actors on leave from Hollywood. They are.

As if in preparation for the carnage to come, the once-upon-a-time story opens in a modern autopsy room with two men, an American and a Korean, dressed in scrubs. Bathed in an eerie, silvery blue light, the American boss (Scott Wilson) orders the Korean (Kim Hak-sun) to dump bottle upon bottle of formaldehyde down the drain, on the pretext that the containers have become too dusty.

Stunned, the Korean objects, noting that the chemical will flow from the drain into the Han River, the fat ribbon of water that cuts through Seoul and empties into the Yellow Sea. The American grimaces, capping his request with a barely veiled threat (“That’s an order”) that betrays him as an emissary of American military might.

Fast-forward to a day like any other and the Park family running its snack stand on the banks of the Han. Calculatingly, goofily dysfunctional, with enough issues to populate a couple of 12-step groups, the Parks don’t seem all that different from the brood in “Little Miss Sunshine.” There’s gramps, Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong), his three adult children — including an unemployed salaryman, Nam-il (Park Hae-il), and his archery-champ sister, the lovely Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) — and only grandchild, the aforementioned Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung). Mostly, though, there is the family’s oldest son, Gang-du (the wonderful Song Kang-ho), an overgrown baby with a shock of badly bleached blond hair and a moon face that waxes and wanes depending on his proximity to his beloved daughter, Hyun-seo.

Bong Joon-ho’s previous features include a smart-aleck exercise in gratuitous nonsense called “Barking Dogs Never Bite” (they just comically kick the bucket) and the shiver-inducing thriller “Memories of Murder.” As he did in “Memories,” about the hunt for a serial killer, Mr. Bong relies on a familiar bag of movie tricks in “The Host.” But, much like Steven Spielberg (an unmistakable influence), he makes all those old tricks feel new. That’s especially true during the monster’s first attack, when Mr. Bong instills an initial sense of calm and then of rapidly escalating panic through his masterful orchestration of the various tempos created by the actors (walking, then running), the monster (swimming, then galloping), the camera (tracking, then racing) and the edits (slow, slow, fast!).

The opening attack is sensationally well directed, and if the rest of the film never quickens the pulse in the same accelerated fashion, it does give the story both its principal excuse (the monster grabs the granddaughter) and something just as satisfying if unexpected: a portrait of parents, children and the ties that bind, sometimes to the point of near-strangulation. “The Host” may be born out of sociopolitical tensions, scares about SARS and the avian flu, or Mr. Bong’s imagination, but it’s also a snapshot of a modern South Korea bordering on social anarchy, one in which a fatalistically obedient old-timer and his three preternaturally immature adult children face down a rampaging beast along with clueless doctors, Keystone Kops, faithless friends and even hordes of paparazzi.

Besieged by humans and monster alike, the family has nowhere to go but deep inside itself. This us-against-them strategy works deviously well because it ensures that the Parks are the star attraction, not the monster. Not that the creature doesn’t have its share of show-stopping moments, as when it’s caught by surprise in midgulp, a pair of legs dangling from its mouth. Or when it regurgitates a corpse into its lair with a slimy splat, an act it seals with a tender lick of its long tongue. It’s in this lair that Hyun-seo, her face and schoolgirl’s uniform flecked with muck, proves her mettle, retrieving the cellphone that becomes the lifeline to her family and playing protector to another child who adds a touching dimension to the mix.

Although some of Mr. Bong’s action scenes here are the match of those in “Jaws,” he seems made of sterner stuff than Mr. Spielberg. He can seem just as cruel, readily putting children in mortal danger, but he doesn’t share the American master’s compulsive need for tidy endings.

“The Host” is a loose, almost borderline messy film, one that sometimes feels like a mash-up of contrasting, at times warring movies, methods and moods. Mr. Bong would as soon have us shriek with laughter as with fright. But it’s precisely that looseness, that willingness to depart from the narrative straight and narrow, that makes the film feel closer to a new chapter than a retread.

Likewise it is Mr. Bong’s willingness not just to contemplate but also to deliver a worst-case scenario that separates “The Host” from run-of-the-mill horror and may have helped make it a runaway hit in Korea. Closer to home the film reminds me less of the usual splatter entertainments that clutter American movie theaters and more of another recent horror film, the one in which a newly thawed alien with a giant brain delivers apocalyptic warnings to humanity about its imminent future. I’m talking of course about the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Much like that Al Gore big-screen lecture, “The Host” is a cautionary environmental tale about the domination of nature and the costs of human folly, and it may send chills up your spine. But only one will tickle your fancy and make you cry encore, not just uncle.

AB, RS and I - lunch @ Pier 3

AB and I - lunch @ Pier 3

AF & JM @ Melbourne Wine Room

NP and me

BB & AP @ Melbourne Wine Room

Double chivas on the rocks - my bucks' night @ Melbourne Wine Room

(self-)censored almost to a crisp

Well, I survived my bucks' night (query appropriateness of the apostrophe). And early reports are emerging - BB, the man for whom the phrase unreliable narrator was coined, provides a version of events here

I planned to write my impressions of the evening but after some minutes work have given up the task as impossible due to haziness of memory, the necessity for self-censorship and the varied humiliations involved.

Snippet from a recent case

Was in court this week for a fencing dispute, which centred around the location of the new fence v the location of the old fence. One side claims that the fence is built along the same line as the old fence, the other claims that the fenceline was moved.

The other side were calling a neighbour as a witness. They told me his name was Doctor X. No problem. They call Dr X.

Q: What are you a doctor of?
A: Civil Engineering

Q: What is your experience?
A: I've taught at MIT and Stanford

Q: How long have you lived in this house?
A: Since the 1950s

The Doctor then proceeded to give evidence as to the location of the fenceline. As you'd expect, he was a reasonably credible witness!!!

My favourite Brett Easton Ellis book

A hard decision. For sheer impact, obviously you can't beat American Psycho. But I enjoyed Glamorama more - it is pretty cool; although on re-reading it recently, it is definitely a lesser work. Rules of Attraction is fun, but doesn't rate on the same scale. The one that troubles me is Lunar Park. It copped a lot of shit when it came out, but for what it's worth if you're a BEE fan then it absolutely hit the mark. It wouldn't convert non-believers, but I thought it was fun, funny, original, clever, a page-turned and a huge fuck-you. All good things. So overall... um... American Psycho.

We love you Summer: Rip The OC

OC Finale Spoiler alert

Seth let Summer go... and she came back to him. The greatest love story of all time ended with the perfect wedding. And no, scarily, I'm not being sarcastic.

In Australia we had the last 2 episodes back to back... the earthquake episode was a bit weak, but I thought the finale was pretty good. The full-circle thing with Ryan reaching out to a troubled kid was a nice touch.

There were some crappy elements, but overall The OC remains the best teen drama since 90210. First season Dawson's Creek was pretty good, but you can't beat beautiful but troubled californians for classic television. Summer, Seth and Sandy were all awesome characters. Caitlin was shaping up into a pretty cool character, and of course Julie had her charms. Obviously Kirsten and Marissa sucked. But the most interesting aspect is that after, what, 4 seasons I still can't remember the name of the actor who played Ryan. Like the character, he has totally flown under the radar and left basically no impression.