It Never Rains In Southern California

After a one-year hiatus caused by COVID-19, I just returned from a Fall excursion to some part of the country where I've never been.  This year, it was to the San Diego / La Jolla region of southern California.  My observations:

• It might have simply been coincidence, but the weather was fantastic.  It was in the upper 70s daily, with a cloudless sky.  The sun felt warm, but was offset by the light, cool Pacific Ocean breeze.  It was the stereotypical 'San Diego' weather that makes one wonder why they don't move there permanently.

• Took the high, arcing bridge from San Diego to Coronado Island, which is mostly known for its naval air station and for the Hotel del Coronado of movie fame.  The island is small, and an hour-long bike ride can get you around the entire inhabited area.  It's basically a tourist trap, with a nicely-kept beach.  The hotel itself is a major draw -- a massive, old structure with lots of friendly folks willing to sell expensive items to both guests and non-guests.

• La Jolla itself is a trendy, knob-shaped area with beautiful ocean views.  It's also an expensive place to live -- the median price of a modest residence there was around $2.5 million.  It's also not an exaggeration to say the majority of cars I saw there were luxury models.  There were lots of open-air eating and drinking establishments, most of which had that chill, wine-drinking type of vibe.

• About 10-15 miles north of San Diego, the Torrey Pines area has plenty of trails to walk and sights to see.  Most will stop at the ‘gliderport’ on the cliffs above the Pacific to watch paragliders swoop up and down, and back and forth along the coastline.  It's an awesome sight for those who've never seen it in person.  Many may have seen the gliders on TV during telecasts of professional golf tournaments at nearby Torrey Pines Golf Course, a gorgeous public venue and also a great place for lunch.

• Speaking of cars, the per capita ratio of Tesla models in the San Diego area was stunning.  They were everywhere.  I presume it's a combination of high gasoline prices ($4.50 per gallon was the average) and the feeling of exclusivity one might crave living in SoCal.

One COVID-related item was that California has an indoor mask mandate, and people were very compliant, as you might expect from any area that relies on tourists.  Contrast that with Iowa / the Midwest where I live, where wearing masks isn't encouraged much less required.  The result is that while the Midwest has always considered itself a safer place to live, right now from a pandemic perspective, it's clearly safer to live in California.

Gone Days Of Summer

August has long been considered the primary vacation month of the year in America, especially for those with children at home.  It's the one warm-weather month in which structured summer activities for kids are generally over, but school hasn't yet started (for most).

It seems to me that this year, the second August of the COVID-19 pandemic era has resulted in more time off for more people than ever before.  I'll take it one step further and say it seems a lot of folks simply decided to take the entire month off from their normal work schedules -- whatever that means these days.

My perception is based on an unofficial tally of certain random things being at an all-time high:

• People needlessly bragging about their August vacations on social media.

• Number of 'out of the office' responses I get to work calls and emails.

• No production of otherwise live TV shows, and/or vacationing TV personalities.  (Some of this comes from the Summer Olympics, which generated hundreds / thousands of hours of new content, and kept other channels re-running old material.)

Yes, a lot of people missed out on their summer vacations last year, and that wasn't going to happen this year.  They also probably wanted to compensate for the time and money saved during their stay-cation last year.

But I also get the feeling that the pandemic has changed things to a more European-style, don't-work-too-hard-in-the-summer here.  With people 'working' from anywhere, they have more latitude about when, where, and how they work.

Maybe, just maybe, we have a new summer way of doing things, one I wish we'd had when I was younger.

Full disclosure:  When it comes to this blog, I also took August off!

Wasted Days And Wasted Nights

[Blog title courtesy of the late American Tejano country music crooner Freddy Fender.]

I've never been much of a county music fan.  I didn't grow up listening to it, except for your occasional crossover country/pop/rock song.

Over the past 10 or so years, I've listened to more country music, thanks to a combination of its contemporary performers and music saturation / technology.  Plus, my adult children now listen more to it, so I hear the overflow.

I've long said that when it comes to one-off, clever song lyrics, country music rules.  (Note I said clever lyrics, not necessarily meaningful ones, so this group won't make it on my 'Best Song Lyrics' recurring blog posts.)

This is particularly true in the area of drinking alcohol, which is definitely one of the most popular themes in the genre.  I suppose it has something to do with so many country songs being about partying, or losing a job or a significant other.

What follows is my alphabetical compilation of 10 country music songs and their *contemporary* performers that even a non-country-music-listener like me knows about, with some of their noteworthy lyrics: 

Alcohol / Brad Paisley

'Cause since the day I left Milwaukee, Lynchburg and Bordeaux, France

Been making a fool out of folks just like you

Alcohol

Bartender / Lady A

Hey bartender pour 'em hot tonight

'Til the party and the music and the truth collide

Bring it 'til his memory fades away

Beer Never Broke My Heart / Luke Combs

Longneck, ice cold beer never broke my heart

Like diamond rings and football teams

Have torn this boy apart

Drink In My Hand / Eric Church

No need to complicate it, I'm a simple man

All you got to do is put a drink in my hand

Drunk On A Plane / Dierks Bentley

It's Mardi Gras up in the clouds, I'm up so high, may never come down

I'll try anything to drown out the pain, they all know why I'm getting drunk on a plane

Friends In Low Places / Garth Brooks

Cause I've got friends in low places

Where the whiskey drowns

And the beer chases my blues away

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere / Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett

Pour me something tall and strong, make it a hurricane, before I go insane

It's only half past twelve, but I don't care, it's five o'clock somewhere

Red Solo Cup / Toby Keith

Red solo cup, I fill you up

Let's have a party

Ten With A Two / Kenny Chesney

Last night I came in at 2 with a 10

But at 10 I woke up with a 2

Tennessee Whiskey / Chris Stapelton

You're as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, you're as sweet as strawberry wine.

You're as warm as a glass of brandy, and honey, I stay stoned on your love all the time.

Wine, Beer, Whiskey / Little Big Town

The wine, the beer, the whiskey, are the only things that fix me

I'm not saying it's a problem, I can stop it if I wanna

But the wine, the beer, the whiskey, they always get me

Faux-Patriots

July 4th week brings out all sorts of people trying to display their patriotism.  This used to be a very simple thing, like American flag waving, wearing red, white, and blue apparel, or attending parades highlighting veterans with marching bands playing old patriotic melodies.

More recently, in the past five years particularly, many Americans have drastically changed their personal definitions of what it means to be a patriot, in ways that are actually the opposite of the word's meaning.

These so-called 'patriots' are basically cut from the same cloth.  They are all on the extreme edges of their political parties.  They all parrot the same rhetoric from the fringe media sources they follow.  They think government is bad -- you know, the same government they desperately looked to when they needed to fend off a pandemic that economically disenfranchised millions, and killed hundreds of thousands of people in the country along the way.

That isn't patriotism.  They don't love their country.  They dislike their country to the point they will resort to -- and even promote -- violence to get their way.  How can you be less patriotic than that?

That isn't to say there's an equal number of faux-patriots on both sides.  No, they are sharply tilted to the Republican side, where conservative extremism has become the norm thanks to a mentally ill ex-president who they somehow excused to make incessant lying and grifting something worthy of their praise (not to mention their vote).

Their stained idea of patriotism has now reached the point that they rationalize armed insurrection is OK, as long as it's meant to stop a democratically-elected government they don't like.  Basically, they are fans of the Civil War, which is further manifested in their promotion of white, Christian, straight, males -- preferably all carrying guns for which they have no permit.

It's gotten to the point of cringing when I hear people use the word 'patriot'.  I don't want their idea of American patriotism conflated with mine: Belief and action towards a free society, with democratic majority rule, capitalism with a social safety net, equality and human rights for all races, genders, religions, and sexual orientations.

That's what the majority of Americans believe in.  That's patriotism.

Dear Graduating Class of 2021

Another crazy, pandemic-altered scholastic year in the books.  One thing still the same, however, is my annual message to graduates.....

To the graduating class of 2021,

Wow, what a final year of school that was, huh?!  You probably spent more of it learning online than in a classroom or lecture hall, depending on whether you lived in a 'red' state or a 'blue' state.  (You'll learn more about the color of states one day, as we run up to the second civil war.)

Was the year really so bad?  For you and for your parents, yes, yes it was.  Regardless of whether you were in high school or college, not being able to fully enjoy all of the curricular and extra curricular of that senior year had to suck.

On the other hand, your sacrifice, such as it was, allowed academic society to function during a pandemic in a way that didn't endanger more lives.  You aren't getting a medal for that, and not many will remember how your senior year was less than it should have been because of it.

Which brings me to my main message -- get used to it.  Meaning get used to not being praised, much less rewarded, for making sacrifices.

This is going to be a theme for most of your life.  Your work bosses are going to take the praise you want, and give the grief you don't want.  That's also going to suck, but like the pandemic, it also won't last.

If you keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard, you'll eventually be noticed and get what's coming to you.  And another silver lining is, you now have a headstart on how to excel by working remotely, the new way of the future.

Let me put it into a different perspective:  The generations before you also had to make sacrifices that ruined their senior years.  These included things like living through -- and being victims of -- race oppression, economic depression, and war.  Imagine having to go overseas to dodge bullets instead of going to homecoming dances or kegger parties.

Unfortunately, those real, major sacrifices didn't garner them the praise they deserved either.  (Some of them did get medals, like purple hearts, if you consider that an acceptable reward for being hurt, or losing a limb.)

So, Buck Up, Class of 2021!  You got the shaft, similar to the Class of 2020, but at least you got a graduation ceremony.  And it doesn't give you permission to live in your parents' basement forever.

Can't Spell Old-Fogie Without G-O-L-F

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post for a message on recent news.  At age 50, somebody just won the PGA Championship, one of the four most important golf tournaments in the world.

Phil Mickelson, nearly age 51, did this a few days ago.  He's the oldest person to ever win a major golf championship.  This is a tremendous feel-good story for both sports and aging.

Over the past two decades, golf has become a sport that requires significant power and clubhead speed to be played at an elite level.  On most American golf courses, it's a huge advantage to be able to hit a golf ball longer.  The course where Mickelson won, the Kiawah Island Ocean Course in South Carolina, was played at one of the longest yardages of any tournament in history.

Just as a late-30-ish person begins to lose their agility and skill at most sports, there's no way a guy in his 50s should be able to hit the ball as far as others that are 10, 20, even 30 years younger.  But Mickelson has stayed healthy and flexible and powerful enough to do it.  That he still happens to have one of the best chipping and putting games in the world is no small feat, either.

To top it off, Mickelson has long been a crowd favorite for both boomers and youngsters, so it was a very popular victory.  He's been my favorite golfer to follow in the past 30 years, going back to when my old favorite growing up, Jack Nicklaus, stopped seriously competing in the late 1980s as he was approaching age 50.

It proves that golf is a sport that can be played competitively, even at the highest level, at an age well beyond what can be done in other legitimate sports.  (A possible exception is bowling, or maybe billiards or darts, but if you can play them in a bar, is it really a legitimate sport?)

It also proves, once again, that people can accomplish great things throughout their lives, not just when they're 'young' whatever that means.

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2021

Unfortunately again this year, only virtual attendance was allowed at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.  It was still quite different than last year, when the meeting was held in an empty arena in Omaha.

This year, the meeting was held in a studio / ballroom in Los Angeles, to make it easier for Charlie Munger to attend and participate.  Everybody missed having him around to make his smart aleck comments last year, including Warren Buffett.

I watched the entire stream again, almost five hours of Buffett and Munger answering questions submitted by email.  Buffett first kicked off the meeting by noting that not one of the 20 top companies by market capitalization 30 years ago are still among the top 20 today.  The point being, no one knows how things are going to change in the coming years.

This year, more questions were directed or re-directed toward the co-COOs, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, so we got to hear more from them.  Which leads to the biggest reveal from the meeting.....

Munger inadvertently mentioned that Greg, (not "Greg or Ajit") would maintain the Berky culture, implicitly admitting Abel would become the CEO.  Buffett confirmed this after the meeting, and while it was highly expected, it was the first public confirmation of something that has been a closely guarded secret for many years.

Aside from that slip of the tongue, the 97-year-old Munger didn't disappoint, sharing his disgust for things like cryptocurrencies, which he described as "contrary to the interests of civilization."  Both Buffett and Munger also held noted disdain for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), due to the self-interest of the participants over shareholders.  Same for new investing apps like Robinhood, which Buffett described as a "casino group that's joined the stock market."

Near the end, one of the best quotes came from Munger when he said about the past year, ""If you're not a little confused by what's going on, you don't understand it."

Buffett signed off by saying he hoped we could all get back together in person next year in Omaha.  I plan to be there.