¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
This edition of RatLinks should take approximately ten minutes to read.
Topics covered this month:
Millennial Museums (3-minute read)
New Year’s Resolutions (1-minute read)
Are 3.5-hour mob movies not long enough? (1-minute read)
Checking up on aging rockers (2.5-minute read)
We bid farewell to four who left us in 2019 (4-minute read)
As always, you can return to this issue and find all previous issues at ratlinks.com.
The RatLinks Podcast will start in earnest in 2020. The January edition will be out in the next few days on ratlinks.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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TAKE A PICTURE IT WILL LAST LONGER
Would you rather be rich or famous?
While both are not mutually exclusive, for the purpose of this debate, you can only pick one.
Which do you choose?
Celeb Status or Baller Status
The overwhelming majority polled picked wealth over fame and not because money buys you happiness. Instead, most voiced that privacy is more valuable than recognition.
If asked this question at the start of the last decade, January 1st 2010, your answer might be different.
That was a simpler time. Selfies weren’t yet invented nor perfected as the most advanced smartphone was the iPhone 3S, equipped with only a rear-facing camera.
If you bumped into a celebrity in 2010 you had few options:
Hope you had charged your digital camera
Be a complete psycho and ask for an autograph
Have an awkward conversation with said celebrity in the hopes that you could tell your friends about it later. A conversation that likely went like this: You won’t believe who I met! usually followed by the response “Did you get a photo?”
In search of that perfect instagrammable moment, everything has become a photo op.
Even Taylor Swift, an artist famous for calling out her Starbucks-lovers, now wants to be more private.
I used to be like a golden retriever, just walking up to everybody, like, wagging my tail. “Sure, yeah, of course! What do you want to know? What do you need?” Now, I guess, I have to be a little bit more like a fox.
Of course, I got a photo. Can you place this A-lister? Hint: zoom in the lower-left corner
DYKER LIGHTS
In 1986, when Dyker Heights resident and “decorating freak” Lucy Spata began a tradition of over the top Christmas lights, her neighbors were non-plussed.
Today things have changed. Residents of Dyker Heights, in southern Brooklyn, are all in on Christmas lights and willingly spend upwards of $4,000 on energy to keep their houses lit 🔥. Letting their neighborhood be overrun by tourists, some arriving via tour busses, all with phone in hand in order to get that perfect Instagram shot.
If you venture to Dyker Heights, during the holiday season, almost every single damn house is lit up with the over-the-top panache of the Griswold family home. The neighborhood is pure abundance of extravagant lighted debauchery. - Harmon Leon for the Observer.com
Did you notice that scary looking Santa on the far left? If not go back and really drink it in.
MATCHY MATCHY
In September, my family ventured to a pumpkin patch. Upon arriving we saw numerous families wearing matching t-shirts. This frightened me as we were at a farm in Long Island, not Disney World. There was no need for any family to wear matching orange and black t-shirts saying something like “The Petersen’s Pick Pumpkins 2019”.
Editors Note: alliteration and the current year are a necessity when designing family shirts.
Entering the farm, I thanked my wife for allowing us to have our own right to personal expression via clothing choice. However, that feeling didn’t last long, as I looked at my son and 30 other kids playing in a pumpkin patch in similar flannel shirts. So much for individuality. At least our photos had the perfect fall aesthetic.
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
The search for the perfect experience has permeated into the far corners of high-brow culture, reaching the museum.
Previously, when the word museum is mentioned a few words came to mind:
School field trip, modern art, dioramas, docents maybe the planetarium.
Not anymore.
Use Your Illusion
Today’s millennial museum experience is all about the experience all while costing three times more than what it takes to enter New York’s Museum of Natural History.
Museums displayed art once but now that achievement is a backdrop for a human face. All aesthetics ignored, they come to show how bold they are, and stunned.
- Jonathan Shieber for TechCrunch
Take cado, a museum devoted to the avocado or the Museum of Illusions where one goes from room to room waiting to take a perfect Instagram photo.
The Museum of Illusions would be interesting if it was original.
I can’t hate it though. In 2017, I attended a similar pop-up.
Don’t worry if you already purchased tickets or attended this museum, you will still get a photo cool enough to generate some pity likes.
I’m Missing You Like Candy
Candytopia is a candy-focused museum that describes itself as:
What if an eccentric chocolatier and a daredevil pop star had a whirlwind romance, got married while skydiving, and had a glamorous, glittering love child who grew up to rule a small nation?
Much like the Museum of Pizza, Candytopia sounds great in theory. Until you find yourself coming down from a sugar high, surrounded by twenty screaming kids in a pool full of plastic marshmallows while an employee attempts to freestyle but only spits one bar on loop:
The marshmallow pit / the marshmallow pit / it’s really lit / in the marshmallow pit
ice cream, ice cream, ice cream paint job
The experiential pièce de résistance is the Museum of Ice Cream, where entry costs $38 + taxes and fees equating to $47 all-in. Guests put price aside in order to take a pic in the extremely instagrammable sprinkle pit.
The Museum of Ice Cream recently sold a 20% interest to an investor group for $40 million dollars, giving the enterprise a completely reasonable valuation of $200 million dollars.
In turns out the museum’s parent company, Figure8 actually received the funding. Figure8 is a business that generates revenue by designing experiums, additional spaces where millennials can connect with each other.
"We created Figure8 to chart the future of how Millennials and Gen Z will want to spend their time … Globalization and technology have made the world smaller, yet people are more lonely than ever"
- Maryellis Bunn, 27-year-old Co-Founder of Figure8 and Museum of Ice Cream
Whatever your opinion is on: experiums, millennials, emotional and transformative moments or spaces created to reconnect.
One thing is certain.
Everyone wants to experience.
It is puzzling how often we are to criticize others when their experience doesn’t align with our own.
This year rather than focusing on outward appearances maybe we should all take a minute to look inward a bit more?
2K20 RESOLUTION
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
Ancient Chinese Proverb
New Year, New Me
As the year begins anew, many people make new year’s resolutions. Not shockingly, the top 3 most common resolutions are:
Lose Weight
Exercise More
Save Money
I don’t make resolutions per se. Instead, I annually try to form a good habit that hopefully compounds into a lifelong skill or new hobby.
Previous examples, all with varying degrees of success:
Spanish lessons - hablo Espanol muy mal
Daily meditation practice - simple but not easy
Writing RatLinks monthly - continue to iterate until acquired by BIG TECH
Learning to play chess - ranking still not above the 1200 hump
100 push-ups and sit-ups every evening - core now engaged
My goal for 2020 is to learn music.
Ratlinks previously covered music and musicians but due to my lack of musical education, I shockingly lack any sort of musical literacy The last and only music class I took was in grade school and it was rather elementary. Be on the lookout for updates as the year progresses.
Enjoying this month’s edition, know someone else who would enjoy it?
AGING ROCKERS: STILL AGING & STILL ROCKING
Marty Scorcese is a masterful director known for films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Casino just to name a few. His film The Departed mixes a high level, long shot, and medium shot just to capture Matt Damon turning on a shower, creating a mise-en-scène of cinematic beauty.
Mr. Scorcese’s ability to conclude a film and tie up loose ends is second to none. Just mentioning the helicopter scene at the end of Goodfellas makes you want to go back and watch it right now.
I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES
Marty’s latest, The Irishman, a film about aging mobsters, drew criticism for being too long. Clocking in at roughly 3.5 hours. While you can complain about the length, I would argue the film is so technically sound, the length shouldn’t matter. If you haven’t watched it yet, don’t let length prohibit you.
Feel free to break up the film over 2-3 sittings. You won’t regret watching something that is so incredibly well-cast, well-written, well-acted, well-directed, well-shot, well-lit, well costumed and well scored.
The Irishman’s final act concludes with a montage showing viewers the fate of every character, while simultaneously putting to bed long-standing conspiracies theories about Jimmy Hoffa.
In that vein, let us return with a few updates from the RatLinks November edition: “Face Tats and All That”
Tekashi69
Remember heavily face tatted rapper and Instagram star Daniel Hernandez aka Tekashi69 aka 6ix9ine. In December, Mr. Hernandez was sentenced to two years in prison by a federal judge for racketeering and firearms charges. Tekashi avoided the much harsher sentence of 38 years by cooperating with prosecutors to convict other Nine-Trey gang members. While the judge deemed the 13 months Tekashi currently served as insufficient punishment, he allowed the time to be applied towards his 24-month sentence.
Will Tekashi disappear in to witness protection upon exiting prison at the end of 2020?
Does Tekashi69 want to live out his days under a new name, in a new town, like protected witness and former goodfella Henry Hill?
The answer appears to be no.
Tekashi told the court he is not interested in the federal witness protection program and that he intends to keep performing and making music. In December, he signed a $10 million record deal.
“Certain things people take for granted — going into a store, going to the movies, things of that nature — Mr. Hernandez will have to think strategically about,” Michael D. Longyear, a prosecutor, said in court. “He’ll have to look over his shoulder.”
Jeff Tweedy
A bullet hits home of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy after several shots fired on his Northwest Side block.
Tweedy and his wife were inside their house around 2 a.m. in November when they heard "seven loud gunshots."
“Nobody was hurt just a little shaken up” said a neighbor, who continued: The Tweedys are a "beautiful family” and “unassuming”
"He’s got all this, his fame and whatever, and he’s out there cleaning the gutter.’’ another neighbor said
Phil Collins
Against All Odds, Phil Collins is still not dead. Mr. Collins is likely spending Another Day In Paradise prepping for next year’s concert run.
Post Malone
Post Malone recently signed-on to play father figure, Dr. Jason Seaver, in the Netflix reboot of Growing Pains, working title More Growing Pains.
In order to collect his check, Posty went and did the unthinkable, spending hours in laser surgery to remove his tattoos.
Editors Note: THIS IS “FAKE NEWS” POST MALONE WOULD NEVER REMOVE HIS BELOVED FACE TATS. PLUS POST MALONE IS FAR TOO BUSY FOR A NETFLIX REBOOT
Ozzy Osbourne
Sharon Osbourne revealed that she and husband Ozzy spent Christmas apart for the first time in four decades. Sharon stayed in London, where she has been appearing in "Nativity! The Musical", while Ozzy remained at the couple's home in the U.S. due to health issues that Sharon described:
In April, Ozzy fell and damaged his spine. It's kind of been a domino effect, one thing happens then another thing. The doctors didn't want him to get on the plane. And Ozzy, I must say, is quite nervous about flying all that way."
Ozzy revealed to the Daily Mail that he initially believed there was very little chance he would bounce back.
"I went to the bathroom in the night, lost my balance and landed flat on my face," he recalled. "I saw this big white flash when I hit the floor and I thought, 'You've finally done it now.' I knew it was bad, I thought I was paralyzed, so very calmly I [told my wife], 'Sharon, I can't move. I think I've done my neck. Phone an ambulance.'"
According to Ozzy, the pain was "constant" following the fall. "The first six months, I was in agony," he said. "I'd say, 'Sharon, you're not telling me the truth. I'm dying, aren't I?' I thought I'd got some terminal illness because the improvement was so slow. I'm getting better, but after the surgery, the nurses asked me on a scale of one to ten how much pain I was in, and I said, '55!' Six months of waking up in the morning and being unable to move is a miserable existence."
The RatLinks community wishes Ozzy a speedy recovery and looks forward to his new tour kicking off in Atlanta on May 27th, which happens to also be the birthday of OG Ratlinker, Henry Kissinger.
RIP RIP
As the new year begins, RatLinks would like to highlight the lives of four people we lost last year.
Rip Torn (1931 - 2019)
Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn Jr. was a versatile actor, who you might remember from roles such as Artie on the Larry Sanders show, Zed from the Men In Black franchise or Patches O'Houlihan in Dodgeball.
What you might not know is Rip Torn had a very short temper.
Mr. Torn lost his cool most notably in 1968, when he was filming “Maidstone,” an underground film written and directed by Norman Mailer. Mailer was also the star, playing a writer running for president. Mr. Torn played his half brother. In a decidedly unscripted moment, and for reasons that have never been made precisely clear, Mr. Torn struck Mailer with a hammer on camera; Mailer responded by attacking Mr. Torn and biting his ear. The fight became the centerpiece of the film.
Rip Torn later in life learned to avoid conflict. Providing this tip that anyone can use to avoid conflict:
I just don’t give people trouble anymore. I say, “Excuse me, I only fight with friends.” and I walk away.
Rip Taylor (1931 - 2019)
For over 50 years Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor Jr made countless appearances on TV and film known as the king of confetti and the prince of pandemonium. You may remember Rip Taylor from the Jackass movies, Home Alone 2, Wayne’s World 2 or his terrible one-liners.
Rip Taylor applied a borscht belt delivery to sometimes risqué material, giddily showering audiences with confetti and pummeling them with puns and one-liners. His exaggerated, manic style helped enliven even well-worn material, a rubber chicken with a Slinky attached to it ("Spring Chicken!"), a bicycle horn taped to a sneaker ("Shoe horn!"). Source: NPR: Rip Taylor was in on the joke
The jokes were groaners, because Taylor's act was less about the gags themselves than it was about letting us into his process. When the first pun-prop he pulled out of his bag failed to go over, he'd toss it aside, and rustle through the bag for another. "Just twenty-seven more to go," he'd say, darkly.
Rip Taylor invented a type of pun driven process humor acting as the comic foil to straight-laced night show hosts like Johnny Carson.
It was a trick to get us on his side — he wanted us to see the effort, to imagine him taking the time and trouble to, for example, stencil the words "A Brief Encounter" on a pair of underwear — all that work, for the sake of such a dumb joke.
Another trick: The laughter. It came at the end of every gag, with much the same volume and cadence, each time ("huh-HAH-hah!") an attempt to goose the audience into finding something funnier than he knew it to be.
Paul Volcker (1927 - 2019)
Paul A. Volcker is best known as the towering, cigar-chomping, Federal Reserve chairman who famously raised rates to break the back of inflation.
Chairman Volcker’s career spanned over six decades, defining monetary policy and counseling almost every president from Carter to Obama. Volcker was apart of the process to break the link between gold and the US dollar and the Bretton Woods agreement, where countries promised that their central banks would maintain fixed exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar.
A few quick definitions:
The Federal Reserve is the United States central bank. The Federal Reserve pursues a dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability by managing core inflation through interest rate policy.
Inflation can easily be described by the old adage - inflation occurs when too much money chasing too few goods thus pushing up prices.
During the Carter administration, the dollar was weakening as inflation surged double digits in the wake of successive oil price shocks, today inflation is below 2% annually, but at the time was as high as 15% per month crippling any and all Washington policy.
With inflation topping double digits, the Volcker Fed shifted policy realizing it had to manage not only the price of money through interest rates but also the supply of money.
However, the implication of the change was that interest rates would have to rise to whatever level was necessary to keep money growth in check, and they did — with the prime lending rate ultimately reaching a record 21.5 percent in December 1980. Driving home the message that the Fed would not allow the dollar to be cheapened by excessive supply.
After leaving the Fed in 1987, Volcker extended work in public service, serving on a committee inquiring into alleged corruption in the UN’s Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, as well as chairing a commission to settle claims against Swiss banks by Holocaust victims.
Barack Obama appointed him to lead an advisory board examining ways of improving the economy creating the Volcker Rule, restricting investment banks from trading proprietarily, for their own book.
“He believed there was no higher calling than public service. His life exemplified the highest ideals — integrity, courage, and a commitment to do what was best for all Americans. His contributions to the nation left a lasting legacy.
- Jay Powell, Current Federal Reserve Chair
Chairman Volcker left a final warning for America published posthumously in the FT . Donald Trump’s attacks on the Fed are helping to undermine faith in democratic institutions. Nihilistic forces are dismantling policies to protect our air, water, and climate. And they seek to discredit the pillars of our democracy: voting rights and fair elections, the rule of law, the free press, the separation of powers, the belief in science, and the concept of truth itself.
Roy Smith (1938 - 2019)
Roy C. Smith was a Navy veteran, President of Goldman Sachs International, a prolific author, gifted teacher and one of the most quoted academic sources and op-ed authors on current financial events.
As a professor emeritus at NYU, you might remember him from classes like Global Banking. Mr. Smith known as Cam to friends was a whip-smart banker whose height and financial knowledge reminded you of Paul Volker.
Mr. Smith began at Goldman Sachs in 1966 specializing in international investment banking and corporate finance in Japan and the Far East. He rose to the position of General Partner in 1976 and was named the President of Goldman Sachs International, responsible for business development activities in Europe and the Middle East while resident in the firm’s London office from 1980-1984. Mr. Smith retired from Goldman in 1987 as the Senior International Partner.
Mr. Smith didn’t just run Goldman Sach’s international division, he helped create major international financial instruments that look obvious today, such as sovereign debt denominated in a non-local currency, think Japanese Government Bonds denominated in US Dollars. Mr. Smith was also very active as British privatized major sectors think British Airways, British Telecom, British Steel, and British Gas. Professor Smith was quick to regale students about pitching the prospect of Goldman assisting with privatization to Margaret Thatcher.
In 2009, during the heart of the global financial crisis, I read Paper Fortunes, Roy Smith’s book about Wall Street’s past, present and future. Wondering who this expert was I read Roy Smith’s bio learning that upon retirement, Mr. Smith became an emeritus professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. Sparking my own interest in an MBA at NYU that eventually lead me into Professor Smith’s classroom. Where for some crazy reason I asked Professor Smith to autograph my copy of his book Paper Fortunes after the final exam.
Upon hearing of Paul Volcker’s death, I immediately thought of Cam, another giant of finance, planning to send him a note to reconnect. I searched for his email, only to find that he had passed away in November after a hard-fought battle with brain cancer.