Iowa Real Estate Convention

I spent the other day at the Iowa Real Estate Convention hosted by the area CCIM chapter. It went fantastically! I really want to get into commercial real estate outside of college, and since we do have any kind of real estate education program at Drake like they do at UNI or even any course you can take, I've really just been trying to take the initiative to reach out to professionals and earn my our kind of education outside of the classroom. Which think I've kind of got an advantage in that sense over the UNI students. UNI has an excellent real estate program up there, but a classroom understanding of the industry is never as valuable as a real world, first-hand understanding of it. Plus, at the convention I was the only Drake student there, so I had reach out to people and build as many connections as possible, while a lot of the UNI folks there kind of stuck together at times. I have a fire lit under me, and you can't beat that.

Really, though, the whole day was just tremendously beneficial. If any students or prospect students read this post, my main advice for you, if you want the career of your dreams, you have to actively go reach out to the business community. They love to young faces there especially students. Many of the professionals in the area are more than happy to help you succeed, but they are not going to know about you until you take the initiative to introduce yourself.

Movie: The Fighter

This is just a great combination. Marky-Mark does fantastic in these under-dog roles fighting to the top; think Invincible or even Rock Star. And, then Christian Bale! He's dedication to performances is remarkable. Look how frickin' transformative he has been here. He has completely altered not just his voice and persona, but his entire physical appearance for the sake of authenticity.

Apart from Rocky V, boxing movies are just always great. There is a nostalgic beauty to the sport. I love a good MMA fight, but often in the grappling you lose visual power of the strikes and blows that really comes across with two prize fighters sparring apart from one another.

Dream Town

It is already becoming depressingly gray and dreary here in Des Moines - Which I want to go off on a tangent about that. Why are the best universities in places with just gawd-awful weather? Why isn't Hawaii State like an ivy league school? If I were some all-star, hyper-brilliant professor, I'm not spending my winters in Cambridge or anything like that. - Anyway, the gray is descending upon us.

To survive this, you got to have a dream spot, someplace warm and beautiful where you can go to in your head. I want to tell you about this place, Dunedin, New Zealand. Mark Twain visited in 1895 and had this to write about the city, "The people are Scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to heaven - thinking they had arrived." What you see there is the sandy white shores of St. Clair Beach, well known for some of the worlds best surf. The city and its paradise-like beaches are wrapped around by these sweeping, astoundingly green hills. In an article from The New Yorker I read recently they described it as "a cross between Ireland and Fiji." That's heaven right there man.

Someday I'm just going to get up and go. Save up and leave it all behind; open a little hotel or boat shop and spend all day by the sea.

Cell Phone Issues

Okay, here's what happens. When I go to the gym I put all my stuff: workout gloves, exercise sheet, protein shake, keys, wallet, and blackberry in my draw string bag to run over there. The new bottle I have for my shake is really great, but you have to be sure the lid fully clicks closed, which I am not used to only because the previous bottle was a screw top.

So my dumb mistake, I head to the gym one day and reach into the bag only to find everything soaking wet and bottle popped open and pouring out the shake. EVERYTHING is soaked in a chocolaty mess including my blackberry. I completely lose it! My entire life is on that little fellow. I cannot afford to lost the information on. I borrow a friends phone to call my dad, and fortunately he has a solution. Mom had discovered a trick for saving the life of a blackberry, when she had experienced a similar disaster.

As soon as you can get you hands on it, get yourself a plastic zip bag full of dry rice. Open up the blackberry, take out the battery, and put the phone hardware and the battery in the bag of rice. Within a few hours, the blackberry will have returned to its initial vibrance.

The only problem I have no is there is little grains of rice in my phone. I have gotten a lot of it out, but the damn thing still rattles. And I think there's something wrong with the microphone. It's not a big problem and certainly a significantly improved alternative from just having the thing fried. I have to really project and use my stage voice, which isn't really a problem, but I guess I'm just a little worried about becoming that super obnoxious guy who's talking too loud into the his phone annoying the hell out of everyone else in the crowd. Whatever

The Sun is Back in Philidelphia

It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia premiered the other night for its new season, and it was of course ... AWESOME! For those who haven't seen the show, you freakin' need to. You are totally missing out on some rarely available top quality television. Thursday nights, 9 o'clock, FX. My best description I can offer is that it is like Seinfield, if all the characters in Seinfield were alcoholics living in complete squaller.

Anyway the first episode had just a bunch of crazy shit happen. The super hot tranny that Mac was on and off with for a little bit got married to the big black guy from the Miller High Life commercial. And yes, I realize I just said a tranny was super hot, but only the character is a tranny. I defy you to say that Brittany Daniel is not one of the hottest women out there.

But back to the show. Dennis called up a chick from highschool or something and just makes the rash decision to marry her. Problem is Dennis is a cold, heartless bastard and this girl wears kitten sweaters and has this terribly disgusting dead tooth at the back of her mouth, so after the first day he's already really regretting it.

Then, just to complete the whole thing Charlie and Frank decide to have a civil union so Charlie can get on Frank's health care plan and Frank can trust Charlie to stop Dennis and Dee from pulling the plug on him when he has is next heart attack.

Oh and Dee, to follow through with the pathetic saddnes that is her life, has started having an affair with a former high school all-star athlete now extremely overweight and married with two kids.

Glad to have the gang back.

Movie: Red

Here's what I like about the idea of this movie. Yes it is a movie about hitmen, which I certainly enjoy, but, what's more, it's a movie about an older generation of hitmen (or hitpeople to be fair to Helen Mirren) who are still astonishly brilliant at what they do, while including a cast of actors of an older generation who are still astonishly brilliant at what they do.

I mean look at this line up. You have Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and Jon Malkovich. All of these actors have had a long, lustrous career of excellent performance, and they continue to deliver. Like Ernest Bourgnine says (also brilliant) in the clip, "They don't make 'em like that anymore."

Return to "The American"

I had mentioned this movie earlier in the year and want to return to the discussion of it here, because I've been reading the reviews of it and was shocked by how critical they have been. This film is freakin' awesome! The cinematography is absolutely beautiful, George Clooney is definitely going to get nominated for his performance in this thing.

The movie is filled with these vast landscape shots of the Italian country side. It reminds me of Wayne Theibaud landscape minus the heavy texture and bizarre colors in that the people treking across them are so miniscule in relation to the rest of the scene and do so along an unbelievably thin line at the very bottom of it all.

All of the reviews are basically complaining that the trailers made The American look like a big action flick like the Bourne series, and the lack of high intensity, martial arts fight scene is what disappoints. First I really don't feel the trailers made it look like a huge action movie, it seemed, like I said, to be another of George Clooney's series of mildly depressed, mid-life crisis males as he did in Michael Clayton and Up in the Air.

The other thing, I feel this approach was just a much more accurate depiction. I realize I don't have too much knowledge of the life of a profession killer, but I really doubt there are too many out there that are anything like Jason Bourne, Agent 47, or Leon of The Professional or any of the other outlandish hitmen Hollywood has given us. In so many movies the assassin is able to just swing his weapon from the hip and in one swift motion and put one between the target's eyes. In The American George Clooney seeks up behind his targets taking several panicked steps forward before pulling the trigger. You can see the fear radiating from his eyes and the adrenaline pumping through him.

At the end of the film, Clooney is badly wounded in a final, four shot, half second exchange of gunfire. It is very likely this is the first time he has every been shot, and it is clear he does not know how to handle such a situation. He does not have the McGyver like innovation Jason Bourne demonstates for recovery from his wounds or the doctor's knowledge of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. Clooney's character, while certainly above that of just a regular guy, is still very much human.

So ignore all of these bullshit reviews. This movie is EXCELLENT!

Big Money Puppet Masters

"Next!" Udo J. Keppley

I want to preface this discussion: I have no problem with the traditional Republican platform. There are several sound, intelligent arguments under it, but the GOP we have today is miles away from the traditional platform. The party has gone off the deep end and succumb to the lunacy of this Tea Party crap. In fact, I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that Ronald Reagan, arguably the greatest president of the 20th century and an icon of Republican values, couldn't even get the GOP's nomination in this climate, but instead would face unrelenting criticism from Limbaugh and Palin.

My frustration with the Tea Party is that it fails to act on the behalf of the types of citizens who have fallen victim to its manipulation but insteads serves to overtly benefit the interests of profit charged conglomerates. The Tea Party has terrorized ill-informed voters into following tow by playing off their fears and lesser qualities of characters. It uses the worst in people to do the ground work of the economic elite. Grass roots movement my ass! This is all the con of a ungodly powerful few; specifically Charles and David Koch.

To better make this point I would like to refer you to an article published a few weeks ago in The New Yorker, Covert Operations by Jane Mayer. The article details the political involvment of Koch Industries, "the largest company that you've never heard of." This according to executive vice president and co-owner, David Koch, who along with his brother, Charles Koch, seem pretty content with that title as they have used their secrecy and ungodly amassed wealth to convertly impact the course of politics and public opinion in the interest of furthering their profit margins. The whole Tea Party movement is really the result of their multi-billion dollar investment over the decades to develop a idealogical ground force.

Through the creation and development of seemingly neutral and generic sounding thinks tank and charity groups, the brothers have been able to funnel ridiculous sums through the system in the promotion of an idealogical agenda that serves only the interest of their pockets. Koch is a massive oil conglomerate, the second-largest privately held company behind Cargill. The company has oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas along with upwards of four thousand miles of pipeline. In addition, Koch is the parent company of Brawny paper towels, Dixie Cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among others. The brothers are deeply and openly opposed to personal and corporate taxes and public services that follow and government regulation of industry; specifically environmental standards.

Despite near universal acceptance by the scientific community that global warming is a real and approaching threat and that fossil fuels play a significant role in its increase, the Koch brothers have gone to outlandish efforts to prevent any environmental legislation to address the problem. From 2005-'08 the brothers themselves outspent ExxonMobil on a tremendous scale in lobbying against regulation. Additionaly, while formaldehyde has been shown and recognized by the medical world to cause cancer, David Koch has spent hundreds of millions lobbying the EPA not to recognize the chemical as a "known carcinogen," all beause formaldehyde is one of the company's widely produced products.

This whole Tea Party bullshit does not have the interest of the working, blue collar Joe at heart. It is all a front companies like Koch behind to better satisfy their greed. I mean take a person like Sarah Palin. That damn bimbo does give a shit about hockey moms or the working class. If she did, she would of stuck to her duties in Alaska and fought on their behalf, instead of abandoning them for big money book deals and speaking tours and a fat salary with Fox.

Libertarins always talk about their fears of giving the government power. But with a government of the people that power is the power of the people that is being denied. Citizens pulling together to bring about democratic representation is the only weapon we as common individuals have against the economic elite hiding away in the shadows of their ivory towers. Many would say there is nothing wrong with what Koch is doing. All business lobby in their economic interest. The reason this instance is so unique is the immense wealth and thus influence that Koch's have thrown into the game and convert, underhanded, backdoor nature in which they did it.

I realize the government has a great many flaws, but when something doesn't run right do you throw it away? No, we fix are problems here in America, not abandon them in defeat. If you're afraid that government will go wild with power and turn into a totalitarian state (as it nearly did with the last administration), demand and lobby for transparency regulation; pay attention to the actions of your representatives and hold them accountable.