Yeah...I'm a Jerk

So...sorry for the unannounced sabbatical from the blog. Won't happen again.

Anyway, just dropping by to say that I should back on my once-a-week schedule, so if you haven't totally given up on me, check back later this week. Should have something new.

But real quick, I'm embarking on a rough week. Well, a rough three weeks. But it's songs like this coming up on Pandora late at night when I know the birds might be chirping before I get to sleep that keep me going. Thanks Pandora. If you were a lady I would totally marry you. And your ring would be huge. And we'd honeymoon in Portugal. I mean if you're cool with that. Unless you've already been there. Actually, I'll let you pick where we go. Unless you say a cruise. A cruise sounds boring. Really, you picking a cruise may indicate that you're not the right one for me after all.

But I digress.

Here's a link to the song. It's called "In All the Wrong Places". Discretion dictated the erasing (erasure?) of about 4 jokes that I just typed. I suggest listening to it. It has no words. And it's not by Erasure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mN-AHnDjG0

Kim + Mike = Comedy Superbaby

Kim and Navy Lieutenant Mike are two of the funniest people I know. And they’re both fellow MBAers.

Kim sits in the front row. That pic is Kim with her husband. Kim says things only she can say cuz she’s a cutie. And the things she says are many times a bit snarky. But she says them in such a way that really, all you can do is laugh. Cuz she’s Kim. And she’s rad. She’s the first person I’ve met that I feel could actually get away with murder. The police burst in. She’s standing there with a bloody knife over a corpse and growing pool of red. She looks at the cops and says, “Wow, I killed the hell out of that guy,” and everyone has a good laugh and sends her on her way.

Navy Lieutenant Mike sits the back row. I’m not sure whether he or Kim has sent the class into hysterics more. Mike speaks up when he disagrees with the professor. His responses are effortless, spontaneous, and painfully funny. And the professor usually doesn’t come out looking all that good. He has a way of using the prof’s own argument against them. Almost Socratic. He can do it cuz he’s super bright. My buddy Joe pointed this out to me. Joe sits next to him. Joe used to always tell me how Mike would whisper to him a couple of times in every class and just crack him up. So I tried sitting by him once last year. In Business Communications. It’s true. Within 5 minutes I’d wet my pants I was laughing so hard. Wet pants were just as uncomfortable as I’d remembered them being when I was 3. I don’t have a picture of Navy Lieutenant Mike so here’s Charlie Sheen and some dude in Navy Seals.

This is frustrating. I simply cannot express how funny these two are. I tried to think of examples but I just have vague recollections of my eyes tearing up while trying to keep composure in class. Maybe this one…last Wednesday…

Professor: I don’t want to just give you the answers.
Kim (deadpan): But it’s just so much easier that way.

Kim is about to have a baby. Pretty much any day now. And I’m secretly disappointed that Navy Lieutenant Mike isn’t the father. You know how we’re all pretty sure that Andre Agassi’s and Steffi Graf’s kids are basically going to just be tennis robots? Same thing. I think Kim and Mike would raise Jerry Seinfeld or Dave Chappelle.

Anyway, Sam had pointed out in the comments that I didn’t include Kim as a Hot Accountant Girl. I didn’t know she accounted. But she certainly meets the criteria. And thinking about Kim made me think about funny MBAers which made me think about Navy Lieutenant Mike. I figured that a blog detailing their exploits would be hilarious. But reading back on it, it really didn’t come together. Unfortunately, it’s already that time of year when I really can’t give any assignment/paper/blog post more than one shot. So this will have to do.

Incidentally, I would like to thank Jared (our University of Utah GBSA co-chair and fan of hated rival BYU (where he got his undergrad)) personally for his Brigham Young University (BYU) Cougars drawing attention to themselves only to humiliate the Mountain West Conference (MWC) in front of the entire nation. See, Utah plays sports in the MWC. In football in particular, the MWC is institutionally disadvantaged. I’ll spare you the details but basically we are given less money and respect than other conferences, which if you don’t know, are groups of schools.

For the last few years, Utah has been carrying the banner for the entire MWC. We’re the only team in the BCS era with two undefeated seasons in football. The only non-BCS team to go to two BCS games. That’s as many as every other non-BCS school combined. We won them both. That’s as many BCS wins as the Atlantic Coast Conference who gets to send a team every year. We’re also the only school ever to have a #1 NFL and NBA draft pick in the same year. If none of this makes sense to you, I’m intentionally being vague. Explaining this would take an entire blog. But if you want me to explain I will. In fact, I’m a freak for this and would wet my pants again if someone actually wanted me to tell them about it.

Anyway, Utah struggles alone. The other schools in the conference are not all that competitive with the rest of the country. BYU especially. BYU is in our conference. While Utah digs in its heels and strains in a futile tug-of-war with the powers that be, BYU holds loosely on the rope with one hand and picks its belly button with the other. To illustrate, BYU had zero wins in its last 12 football games against top 25 non-conference opponents.

Until a couple of weeks ago. They beat Oklahoma. On the road. #3 in the nation Oklahoma. Holy crap. They picked up the rope! They’re going to pull! The entire country is watching them now! So what do they do?

They lose. They lose 54-28 to Florida State. At home. Sigh.

Most headlines used variations on the words “exposed” and “humiliated”.

Thanks Cougars. Go back to your belly buttons.

WorkNet…Network…Get it? I didn’t.

This entry is about WorkNet. About a minute ago I was thinking, “WorkNet. That’s kind of a lame name.” Then I realized it’s “network” flipped around and now I’m thinking, “I’ve heard the term a million times and just now figured that out. I'm an idiot.”

WorkNet is this program run by the MBA office where groups of students go and meet big shots in the business world. And I mean big shots. They are taking a trip to Cincinnati in the next couple of months and are going to a Reds game with one of the owners. Then they’re going to meet the CEO of P&G. As in Proctor & Gamble. As in $81.7 billion dollars of sales in 2008. These guys are not unimportant individuals.

In addition to out-of-town trips, they arrange in-the-town trips. Friday we went to Miller Motor Sports Park. The late Larry Miller, Utah’s version of JD Rockefeller, loved cars. He collected Cobras and wanted to build a racetrack that he and his family could race around on. But, like hobby projects tend to do, things got out of hand. What started as a $10 million dollar course turned into a $115 million dollar state-of-the-art motor sports park.

It was excellent. Among others we got to meet the managing director, John Larson, and Larry Miller’s son, Bryan. Bryan is amazing genuine and down-to-earth. I totally wouldn’t be if I were him. I’d be a snobby jerk. He took us around and showed us the entire complex, including his Dad’s collection of cars that I now want.

And the place was cool. Have you seen Dr. Strangelove? Know the war room? And that big round table? They have one of those! I sat at it! It was probably 20 feet across. And as I’m sitting at it I’m overlooking a 4.5 mile road course watching motorcycles race around. From John Larson’s office we could watch the off-roaders jumping around in the dirt. It’s even better than Excitebike led me to believe.

I’m not one to blow smoke. If I think something is lame or useless, I’m not going to say otherwise. Most likely, I just won’t way anything at all. So when I say this was a great time, I mean I really had a great time. The place was great, the people were great, the experience was great. And insightful. Business-wise, there’s a lot going on. The place is literally world class in market that knows nothing about motor sports. And one that’s buried in snow for a large portion of the year. How do you make a viable race venue business out of that? Creatively, I imagine.

So WorkNet…been to one so far and loved it. Gonna try some more.

I need to remedy something. Last year I wrote about the Hot Accounting Girls. There was a glaring omission. I found out last week that my buddy, Ashley, has an emphasis in accounting. For the record, she’s also into health care administration, which I assumed was all she was into. Anyway, had I known last year that she was an accountant, she would have been included with the likes of Jen and Jessie. Ashley is freckly which absolutely busts me into pieces. I think it stems from the crush I had on Cheetarah when I was 8. Anyway, Ash, sorry I left you off. You are one hot Thundercat.

Prof. Schaefer and Paula...Selfish Jerks (not really)

Last week we had a one day orientation for second year MBA students. Panels, resume review, housekeeping…good stuff. As part of it, they had Scott Schaefer, my economics professor from last year, speak to us on the state of the economy. Listening to him reminded me how ticked I was at him.

See, I was supposed to be taking a course from him this semester, but I got an email earlier this summer explaining that he had been promoted to Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. This meant the course was dropped. Crap. I was looking forward to it. I couldn’t even tell you what the course was, I just knew I wanted to take a course from him.

Schaefer’s a great professor. He’s able to walk you through very complex concepts and make them totally understandable. If my life was an action movie and the guy in the airport control tower was on the radio talking me through landing the plane because the pilot had been killed, well, I’d want Prof. Schaefer to be the guy in the tower talking me through it. The man knows how explain things.

(I originally had him talking me through disarming a bomb, not landing a plane. Still not sure I went with the right analogy.)

Anyway, I learned a lot from Prof. Schaefer. This is not to suggest I did well in his class. I did not. In fact, grade-wise, it was my worst class. I’m hard pressed to remember having done that poorly on a final since Japanese class my sophomore year in high school. I’m not giving anyone in Tokyo directions any time soon. Still, I want to learn from Prof. Schaefer. He's crazy smart. You can tell. When you ask him a question, he'll pause, look up, and you can just feel the gears in his head spinning. We're not talking simple gears. Large, important gears like in Big Ben.

So I’m ticked. Apparently, it’s more important to him to advance his career, provide better for his family, and guide the direction of the entire program than to teach me whatever the hell I signed up for. That’s just selfish.

Speaking of selfish, I need to give a shout out to Paula Crow. I take that back. I think the term “shout out” is stupid. I need to acknowledge my former academic advisor Paula Crow. She is leaving to pursue a Masters in a Communications. I’ll miss Paula. I decided I would be attending the U roughly 10 seconds before orientation. When I showed up totally unprepared in jeans and Tshirt on a day when I was supposed to be wearing a suit, she tolerated all my crap and disorganization with a patient smile. And she’s been nothing but sweet and wonderful ever since. In fact, she’s the one that has me doing the blog. But, like Schaefer, she’s putting her designs on self improvement and fulfillment above my desire to have her to around to say hi to every once in a while. Jerk.

So I’d like to wish these two luck. Jerks.

Unrelated...It occurs to me that was probably the last summer vacation I’ll ever have. Granted I didn’t do much. Mostly worked on my internships. I did go to NYC to be a godfather. I’m not religious but am part Italian, so they let me do it. Which may have been a mistake. Check it out. This picture is the exact second little Tony (named after me, sweet) got baptized. Check out my eyes. I think I’m a demon. Yipes.

Anyway, I can’t decided whether I should be happy or bummed that I’ll never have another summer vacation. So when in doubt, celebrate. Here’s my celebration song (this week). Puts me in a good mood. If you seeing me driving 90 miles an hour singing to myself, there’s a good chance this is playing in my car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4MXFOMpVIw

I'm Famous Part II...Even More Famous

So I told you I’d let you know when the video of me talking about the David Eccles School of Business was posted. I lied. Apparently it’s been up for a couple of months or something. Anyway, here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX2m2IXrDJU

But before you watch, some disclaimers. The video seems to emphasize the fact that, at times, my eyes don’t look symmetrical. Or that maybe both halves of my face are slightly offset. Well, they’re not. My nose is crooked. I broke it when I was 9. Well, I didn’t break it. My Dad broke it. We went 4Wheeling and I did fine riding on my own. But my Dad wanted to go with me and drove us into a dry riverbed. In his defense, he honestly thought we could clear it. Not in his defense, he was a fool and there was no chance in hell we were going to clear it.

Anyway, it actually healed crooked and they had to re-break it to straighten it. You want tickly, itchy torture? Try bandages that cover your nostrils and never come off for 3 weeks. It was hell. And as you’ll see, I have big nostrils. (Wow, I’ve already written “hell” twice in this blog. I’ve come back from summer all saucy.) They told me then that if I hit my nose again before I was 16 to come back because it would probably go crooked and they could reset it. About 2 weeks after I got the bandages off, my older sister pulled my face down onto her knee all Hacksaw Jim Duggan style. And that was just the first of a steady stream of incidents that spread my nose all over my face. So I didn’t go back and resigned myself to looking like a Roman boxer. Or a Picasso.

Incidentally, I’m trusting Google that the pic is a Picasso. If it’s not, let me know. An art scholar I’m not. Unless Bob Ross counts. Watched him religiously as a kid. Happy little trees. Half painter, half philosopher, all afro.

Another disclaimer. I’m apparently boring. I’ve only shown this video to one person, my friend Brittany. About a minute into it she asked if she could check her Facebook. Then she started skipping forward through the video. She did, however, giggle a little at the end when they had me talk about this blog.

Maybe it would be better if you just watched the 3 others they interviewed...Jarum, Varun, and Nana. I spoke way too quickly and frenetically. You can actually understand what these three are saying. Please watch at least one, though, so this blog conveys something about the program and not just something about my busted up face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YDZpD2PnVU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEitozK5Vy8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsB9eMFdtXU&feature=related

In retrospect, I should have taken this opportunity to talk about Jarum, Varun, and Nana. But I wrote all about it me. Narcissistic. Oh well, I’m not going to rewrite it.

Did Someone Say Moustache?

Chris indicated to me, via the comments section, that he was concerned the photo of him accompanying the post about his financial prowess portrayed him as less than manly. So here he is at Ragnar. All man. All the time.

For the record, instead of “moustache” in the header of this post, I should have used a term that starts “po…” and ends with “…rn ‘stache”. But I’m worried that might get me firewalled.

DESBMBA...All G-Rated, all the time.

Running Utes. Sweaty, Tired, Sore, Running Utes.

A while ago I mentioned that Jessie (who, along with getting into the Lassonde Center, has already landed a job upon graduation. God, I hate her. Hate her with me. We’ll hate her together) organized a team to run the Wasatch Back Ragnar relay. Basically, 13 of the other MBAers ran about 200 miles straight, relay style. That is ridiculously macho. Way to represent for the U MBA kids. So here’s a bunch of pics of my classmates who I think are just awesome. And no, I didn’t run. When I exercise, I prefer to take my life into my own hands. And I’m not talking eating-at-the-suspect-taco-cart taking my life into my own hands. I’m talking mountain biking with much better riders while being naturally blessed with no balance whatsoever. But I digress.

That's Ashley running at night. She is so not afraid of the dark. I've never written about Ash. I'll have to one of these days. She's the sweetest spelunker ever.

And that's Filip passing the baton off to Jarum who is, apparently, harnessing the wrath of the gods.

BTW...I should not say anything bad about the taco carts. I’ve eaten there hundreds of times and only gotten sick once which, I feel, is a totally acceptable ratio. You can’t go wrong with the cart in the south parking lot of Sears on 8th South and State Street. There are two in that parking lot, actually. Go to the one on the east end, not the south end. The eastenders were first. I used to drive by there every day on my way to work and remember vividly when the southenders started showing up. It got ugly fast. For a while there they were both simultaneously blaring music over each other. Dueling fiestas. That’s the problem when your brick and mortar is actually wheels and a trailer hitch. Competition can set up shop in your backyard. Sears, incidentally, seemed ambivalent to the whole thing. It's been dying a slow death there for 15 years. Mariachi requiem.
Check out this picture of Yogesh. Eye of the Tiger? This picture is so that song. That is a look that hits 3 out of 4 at the dunking booth.

Next to him is Sam getting shot out of cannon.

"Brick and Mortar”. That’s a term I heard for the first time when getting my MBA. It’s a clever way to refer to a physical place. I mean, it’s kinda clever. Of course here in Utah, instead of brick and mortar it’s more like stucco and…uh…stucco. Variety is the devil’s plaything. No, I exaggerate. Salt Lake is a beautiful city. Uniformity only really festers in some of the sub-divisions. They can be very Edward Scissorhands sans the cool hedge sculptures.

I don't know what Filip did to justify a judo chop from Robert, but I don't imagine that Filip survived.

On a Utah Culture note, Moroni got struck in the face by lightning. Utah has a bunch of Mormons. It was founded by Mormon settlers. We have lots of Mormon temples. Each Mormon temple has a gold statue at the top of it. The statue is the same on each one. It’s an angel named Moroni blowing a horn. Apparently, Moroni will blow the horn at the end of the world. Basically, it's dinner bell for the apocolypse. So if you’re driving by a Mormon temple, roll down your windows and listen. If you hear a horn blow…well, roll’em up.

Anyway, one of these statues got struck in the face by lightning. My knee jerk reaction was to call all my Mormon buddies and warn them that they might be barking up the wrong tree. But it occurs to me, those statues are basically lightning rods. I’ve lived here my whole life and this is the first time I’ve heard about one of them getting hit. The fact that those aren’t struck a dozen times every storm is nothing short of a miracle. Maybe these Mormons are onto something.

Incidentally, I think Microsoft’s spellcheck recommendations for Moroni are downright offensive. In a row… Moronic, Moron, Maroni, Morons. That is not nice.

Here's Aline with Dan's belly. Everyone's a winner.