Sekaas Blog

RESPECT! TALK!

lorimi — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:48:12 +0000

This is a response to the letter written by Michael F. Coles [criticizing Vinnie Paul's advice column]. If you want some serious answers from rockers who do advice columns, write to Alternative Press. There you will get the fucking emo-pop bullshit answers you are looking for.

What are the three aspects of rock and roll? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Been that way for years. This is a hard-rocking magazine; leave your pussy-boy attitude at the door. Rockers do like to eat pussy. Simple fact. Revolver, keep Vinnie. As a fellow rocker myself, I believe his advice fits all aspects of your magazine. Keep rockin’! —Derek

Just got the June ’09 issue in the mail today and read the letters section. The letter from Michael F. Coles about Vinnie Paul’s “advice” is absolutely hilariously true. I get that Vinnie is “cool” and saying what might be considered cool things to some people, but holy shit, his advice? Just terrible. Although, it actually almost goes quite well with Cristina’s column, now that I think about it.

REVOLVER

lorimi — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:22:36 +0000

The Revolver staff gathered with friends, family, lovers, and a retarded amount of alcohol to watch MTV2′s broadcast of highlights from the three-hour-plus Golden Gods awards show. Top row, from left Revolver contributing illustrator Cojo with Headbangers Ball and Liquid Metal’s Jose Mangin, editorial intern Chris Krovatin with associate editor Kory Grow, and advertising director Alana Zinn (second from right) and family. Middle row: Revolver business development manager Josh Bernstein with Golden Gods host Brian Posehn, Retna Photography’s Anna Dickson with Revolver photography director Jimmy Hubbard, and senior writer Jon Wiederhorn with contributing writer Katherine Turman. Bottom row: Revolver ad sales rep Jeff Tyson with associate art director AN Ghuzzi, and Revolver superfan Joseph Schuftan with the July issue.

THIS WAY IN

lorimi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:45:32 +0000

From his fear of offending Rush Limbaugh to his fer¬vent belief that the Republicans will always be right and everyone else wrong, Jeb Bush shows himself to be as insular and out of touch as the rest of the GOP.

A CLIMATE IN SEARCH OF A SOLUTION Political economist Bjorn Lom-borg examined the most popular plan to address climate change, which he considers a futile use of money (“Mr. Gore, Your Solution to Global Warming Is Wrong,”August). Lomborg’s article is one of the best I have ever read. Global climate change is quite real, and it may be possible to change the outcome, but the shrillness of the doomsayers only attracts the naysayers. I realized that the more shrill the ar¬gument, the less likely I am to be swayed bv it. The more PETA shrieks about meat and fish, the more I want to find a really good surf-and-turf place. The more the global-warming clan decries the end of the world, the more I want to go out and buy a gas-guzzling SUV. This article puts a realistic and far more convincing face on the entire matter.

HOW TO EXPLAIN LIFE IN”THE TRUCK” Writer at large Chris Jones wrote about his experience apprenticing with an Ottawa. Ontario, EMTCThe Strange Happiness of the Emergency Medic.” August). I have been a volunteer EMT and firefighter for a number of years. I hit the sack know-ingthat I could be awak¬ened at any hour to extricate a mother and child from an overturned car in a mountain creek, or just assist an elderly gentleman who got light¬headed getting up for a mid¬night snack. From now on when people ask me, Why do you do it? I will just hand them Jones’s fine testament.

JERRY RETZLOFF: TEQUILA FAN Finally, an article that gives tequila the respect it deserves (Man at His Best, August). I’ve been drinkingtequila since the early 1950s, when I crossed the Mexico border with my father to shoot tequi¬la and eat cabrito cooked in dirt ovens. When my wife and I returned from our honeymoon in 1964, we brought home quarts of Cuervo and Sauza tequila. It cost only seventy-five cents a bottle. Tequila docs give you the hal¬lucinogenic edge you talked about, and I can confirm that it is an aphrodisiac: It mixes well with club soda and orange sherbet for the ladies.

ELSEWHERE IN THE BIN The August issue struck me with the urge to say thank you. Thanks for reminding me to watch The Shawshank Redemption again (This Way In). Thanks to Scott Raab for always making me think that the person he interviews would be cool to hang out with (Man at His Best). Thanks to David Granger for telling us all again that good tequila won’t give you a hangover (Man at His Best). Thanks for the photo of sweet Mary-Louise Parker. And thank you for continuing to be a great magazine. Since my family’s move to a lighthouse island in the middle of the sea, I have taken up a few hobbies: lifting weights, (I’m currently on Emmylou Harris’s Luxury Liner), and readingthe oeuvre of American philosopher Ken Wilbcr. However, when the chilled beer can cracks open, and my son’s off being bathed by his mother, there is nothing I’d rather do than dive into the glorious pages of Esquire. Makes me forget about lighthouses, philosophers, and the weights of this world.

IN MEMORIAM The electronic cover on my seventy-fifth-anniversary issue (October 2008) died May 27. It lived on my coffee table, was a lively conversa¬tion piece, and passed away while I was at work.

OUT THE DOOR, BUT STILL ON THE HOOK

lorimi — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:20:01 +0000

Even those who pulled money from Madoff’s funds before the blowup could end up sharing in the pain

The managers of the Fort Worth Employees’ Retirement Fund thought they had dodged a bullet when Bernard L. Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11 for alleged fraud. Just a few months earlier the $1.7 billion public pension plan had pulled $10 million out of a hedge fund that invested exclusively with Madoff. But now the managers face the possibility of having to give back the money—a sum that includes all of the pension’s purported gains over the years plus its initial investment.

The Fort Worth plan and other Madoff investors who got out before the operation imploded may yet be snared by the bankruptcy proceedings. Under federal law, the trustee in the case can sue former investors to force them to return their profits and principal, a process known as a clawback. The legal theory is that investors who stick around to the bitter end shouldn’t bear all the pain. With the multibillion-dollar tally of losses rising daily, the Madoff case could take years to unravel in court, leaving hundreds of pensions, endowments, and other former investors in the lurch as they await a ruling on their financial liability. “It depends on what the trustee wants to do,” says Michael Missal, a lawyer at K&L Gates. Irving Picard, the trustee named on Dec. 15 to oversee the liquidation of Madoff’s business, declined to comment.

Picard may take his cues from the recent bankruptcy case of Bayou Group, the $450 million hedge fund whose managers were convicted of conspiracy and fraud in 2005. The trustee in those proceedings, Jeff Marwil, filed more than 130 suits against investors who had pulled money from the fund within the prior six years. Marwil argued that former clients, even those who barely knew Bayou manager Samuel Israel, should have to take a hit as well, since Bayou was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The judge ruled in his favor.

The clawbacks in the Madoff case could prove more controversial. In most hedge fund scandals, including Bayou, the majority of clients invested directly with the dubious money management firm. But most of Madoff’s customers came through a half-dozen or so “feeder” funds. Those affiliated vehicles operated under their own brand name but handed much of the money over to Madoff.

“FINANCIAL DEATH SENTENCE”

Some investors may not have known what they were buying. The Fort Worth pension fund, for example, owned the Rye Select Broad Market, a hedge fund managed by the Tremont Group. The Rye marketing literature rarely, if ever, mentioned Madoff by name, even though his fund was the only invest -ment. Says Steven Caruso, a lawyer for anumber of Tremont investors: “Some investors may be facing the prospect of a financial death sentence if they’re forced to return funds.” In a letter to investors, Tremont’s managers say they “exercised appropriate due diligence.”

Managers of the Fort Worth pension fund, who first invested with Rye five years ago, started to rethink their investment in early 2008 after hiring Albourne Partners, a London due diligence firm, to assess their hedge fund portfolio. The Rye fund raised red flags almost immediately. Albourne’s managing director, Simon Ruddick, says the firm, which had long – standing concerns about Madoff’s trading strategy and consistent returns, had urged clients for nearly a decade to avoid affiliated funds such as Rye. In July the pension’s board voted unanimously to dump its Rye stake. “If you are person who has nothing left, naturally you want everyone to share in the pain,” says Robert Klausner, a lawyer for the Fort Worth pension. “But if you are someone with no inside knowledge of fraud who redeems an investment in the ordinary course of business, you shouldn’t be punished.”

In one of

lorimi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:15:30 +0000

the biggest of the big new TV shows, FlashForward, Joseph Fiennes plays an FBI agent investigating a global conspiracy in which people catch a glimpse of the future and all hell breaks loose. It’s aLost-like puzzle of intersecting narratives and slow-creep paranoia, yet of all the mysteries presented to the audience, none are quite so troubling as the one surrounding the man at the center of it all: Where the hell has Joseph Fiennes been all these years? Seriously: The guy gives a performance for the ages in Shakespeare in Love and then proceeds to drop off the scene for the better part of a decade. What happened? With FlashForward, the thirty-nine-year-old actor is back in the thick of things—press junkets, billboards, the sides of city buses—and here, speaking to us from his temporary home in Los Angeles, he clears up a few things.

RRUIRE: So it’s been a while. What have you been up to these past few years? JOSEPH FIENNES: Working. In Europe, mostly, with independentfilmmakers and producers. I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to chase big-box-office movies, so even when Shakespeare went through the roof, it didn’t change anything. I still wanted tobe a working actor, which is all I’ve ever known and all I’ve ever wanted.

RR: Butyou were the Next BigThing. JF: There’s always going to be a Next Big Thingand a hottestthis and the sexiest that. That’s the nature of the beast, but I didn’t want to be involved in it. It’s too easy to get pigeonholed in the movie business, and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I wanted to be a free agent, and if I wanted to go and work with strange European alternative filmmakers rather than big American studios, I could. RR: Which brings us, of course, to your new show produced by a big American studio. JF: Well, like all interestingcharacters, I contain contradictions. Forgive me. But I feel that American television is so much more excit-ingand engagingthan movies. Its characters tend to be more well-rounded, and it doesn’t adhere to the same formulaic structure that I read every time I pick up a film script. RR: So TV is good?

JF: TV is more than good, and I don’t quite know how this little adventure of mine is going to pan out. I could get a phone call saying the show’s been canceled. I could get a call sayingthey’re orderinganother ten episodes. I’m just rolling with the punches. RR: In case it does get canceled, can you clear up some of the show’s mysteries? JF: I only know what’s happening in the next episode—that’s all they tell me. I’m living with the character as one does in daily life: not knowing what’s around the corner. M

THE RACONTEUR ERIC WRIGHT TAKES UP THE STORY OF FACONNABLE

lorimi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:07:09 +0000

EVERY GOOD FASHION DESIGNER should also be a story¬teller—about his clothes, his customers, the things that distinguish his designs from the other guy’s—and Eric Wright, the recently installed creative director of Faconnablc, has a few stories to tell. Take, for exam¬ple, the one behind his new employer: It begins on the French Riviera in 1950, when a tailor—a “very, very famous tailor in the region,” Wright says—opened a shop in Nice that catered to European swells on holi¬day. (“Everybody went to him to have their dinner suits made. He had a very special touch.”) Over the years, the brand evolved to focus on laid-back, luxurious sports¬wear that attracted customers whom Wright describes as “real men who had a certain sensibility about style and color and ease.”
The story of Eric Wright, meanwhile, begins in San Francisco, sketchin gdresses for his mother at the age of five (“Stores would send her things and I would say, “No, Moth¬er, you have to send that back—it’s not very nice’”) and visiting his father’s tailor for a custom-made cashmere boarding-school uniform. (“It had to fit perfectly. The blue had to be a certain kind of blue. It had to be double-breasted, and the metal buttons had to have my initials on it.” He was seven.) His story then moves to Europe, where Wright spent a few decades designing in various capacities for Karl Lagerfcld (an “incredibly disciplined man”) and Roberto Cavalli before meeting his current employer. This is where the two stories converge. “My DNA is very close to Faconnable’s. Growing up in San Francisco, which has the same sort of weather as Nice, you apply layers in the morning because it’s cooler, and by the afternoon, you’re down to your shirtsleeves because it’s very, very warm. I’ve always had an appreciation for the weight of fabrics and for the importance of layering, and so when I was offered the job, my instincts were saying, Do it, because it was something that was in my blood.” For his first collection for Faconnable, now in the com¬pany’s growing number of stores, Wright mixes casual sportswear with classic tailoing and places a huge emphasis on color, his spectrum ranging from a red corduroy suit and electric-blue trousers to a beige shear¬ling coat and gray shawl-collar pullovers. It’s an eclectic, appealing mix of styles and sensibilities, designed for—and by—a man with afew stories totell.

Mobile phones

lorimi — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:05:14 +0000

Mobile phones are seen everywhere, because of their lucrative and alluring qualities for any customer. Everyone wants to buy a mobile phone that comes for free along with an array of incentives plus an immense gift item to compliment the whole offer. The apparently beneficial ways is that: who can play a crucial role in appealing a user to buy the mobile phone. In the online unlocked phone stores, you are the luckiest soul on the earth. The latest slide cell phone is your best choice. It is a dual band unlocked phone for you. The Network covers GSM 900/1800 MHz. The weight of the slide cell phone is just 90 grams and coming in at 105*50*20 mm. The slide cell phone is certainly lighter and slimmer than most 3G handsets. At the same time the slide cell phone does not skimp on the specifications. In addition to everything that we have already mentioned, this slide cell phone has also a Bluetooth, FM radio, a multimedia player, and camera and so on. It is a lightweight slide cell phone. This slide cell phone features a 2.0 mega pixel camera, as well as 2.8 inch TFT LCD screen. The Other additional feature of the slide cell phone is MP3 player which can allow a good music experience for you. The slide cell phone is also in a good style. The slide cell phone borrows the typically understated styling from many other good devices to create a best one, which is smart but not overly showy. It’s the type of device that would be equally suited for personal or business use.

FOUR HOURS IN A BAR

lorimi — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:49:54 +0000

A few words on ordering drinks over the long haul
Spend theeveningin a regular beer-and-shot, Jack-and-Cokebar, and you know how to pace yourself so you don’t end up facedown on the floor next to the Big Buck Hunter machine. After all, the choices are fairly limited and their potencies and effects well-known. But start in on the cocktail list at the sort of boutique, speakeasy-style cocktail bars that have recently come to define the cutting edge of 21st-century American drinking, and suddenly you’re in very deep waters indeed. A couple of Final Wards (that’s rye, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lemon juice), an Improved Holland Gin Cocktail (Dutch genever with bitters, maraschino, and absinthe), and a Tequila Daisy (more or less a margarita but in concentrated form) and the cushion of your barstool is serving as a flotation device. Let’s call it atime-management problem. These pre-Prohibition-style drinks might be seductive, but they’re also very, very strong. Here are some guideli nes for both the beer bar (just a rem inder) and the 21st-century cocktail bar (an expostulation).
Whatwedo: We always start off with abig, fat, heavily alcoholic IPA bock orbarley wine and save the lighter lagers for later. We intersperse our G&Ts with club-soda-and-slice-of-limes after the first hour and a half. And we shake off the Irish Handcuffs—that’s a pint in one hand and a whiskey in the other, for those of you who only drink at the fancy cocktail bars— and switch to one-handed drinking when the angle of the little hand starts getting acute.
Normally, after a couple of stiff drinks, a switch to beer is in order. But beer in a cocktail bar? Look to the fortified wines: sherries, ports, vermouths, and other aperitifs (such as French specialties Lillet and Dubonnet and the Italian Campari and Aper-ol—although these last aren’t actually made from wine). Now, for a martini drinker, the idea of consuming a cocktail based on one of these is like eatingthe parsley and throwing away the steak. But after your third steak, that might not seem like a bad idea. Forti fied or not, these things top out at less than 40 proof—half the strength of the weakest spirits—yet their flavors are concentrated enough that they twist up into a perfectly tasty cocktail. As one veteran tippler noted in 1885, “Vermouth cocktails … don’t break you all up.”