In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich
By GARY RIVLIN Published: August 5, 2007
MENLO PARK, Calif. — By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.
Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.
Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.
“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”
Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.
But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.
When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.
“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.
Not every Silicon Valley millionaire, of course, shares that perspective.
Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.
Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.
Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”
Working inside a start-up has always been invigorating, she says. But she and her husband, 62, who also works, have concluded that she must stick with it if they are to continue to live the life they enjoy here.
Recently the couple hammered out an agreement: Ms. Baranski will work at least five more years for the sake of their bottom line.
“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades.
The Luck Factor
Many of the more modest millionaires here feel sheepish, even guilty at times, about their piles of cash. Talent played in a role in their financial success, but so did being at the right place at the right time.
“They recognize that if they happened to walk into a different office,” said Marilyn Holland, a Menlo Park psychologist who has been counseling the Valley’s elite for 25 years, “things would have turned out very differently.”
That is one big difference between these working-class millionaires and the country’s wealthiest tycoons, who tend to see themselves as pillars of the community worthy of the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, they now possess.
“A lot of the money here is accidental money,” said Bruce Karsh, 51, an engineer who puts his net worth at $2 million to $4 million. “People weren’t setting out to become gazillionaires.”
Ms. Baranski is one of them. The daughter of a college professor who died when she was 12 and left her mother to raise three children, she began college intending to become a musician. But worries about the debt she was racking up prompted her to transfer to the engineering school, where she eventually earned a master’s in electrical engineering.
That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”
“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”
Ms. Baranski is hardly the only working-class millionaire asking herself this question. Ms. Holland said she regularly works with multimillionaires who wonder why they are so well compensated when others, like teachers, who contribute so much to the world, are not.
The lucky moment in Ms. Baranski’s career came when she took a job as the head engineer at Handspring, the hand-held device maker, in September 1999. By the end of 2000, Ms. Baranski’s stock holdings briefly made her one of the wealthier women in Silicon Valley.
At quick glance, Ms. Baranski and her husband, Paul, live modestly. She drives a 2006 Subaru, her husband a six-year-old Saab. Their children attend public school, and vacations tend to be modest affairs centered on visiting family.
Ms. Baranski cares little for clothes or jewelry. They have a swimming pool, but only because Ms. Baranski pressed hard for one, a dream of hers growing up in Southern California.
Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house.
Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is far better off than many of her neighbors. Even well-paid college administrators, professors and other white-collar professionals struggle to pay their bills in this expensive redoubt 30 miles south of San Francisco.
“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.
Her nanny rents an apartment in Palo Alto, Ms. Baranski said. She pays her what she described as a generous salary and gave her the keys to her old Saab when she bought the newer one. But “basically I have no idea how she survives here.”
Mr. Hettig, the estate planning lawyer, sums it up for many: “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”
‘A Dime a Dozen’
David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.
But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.
“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”
No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands, say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods.
That certainly describes Tony Barbagallo, 44, who over the last two decades has collected around $3.6 million in stock and options from companies he has worked for. Despite his good fortune, though, he is surprised to find that he worries like most other Americans about matters as varied as the soaring cost of health care, the high price of college and the pressure to sock away more money for retirement.
Taxes have devoured about 40 percent of his stash, Mr. Barbagallo said, knocking that figure down to $2.2 million. Over the years, he has tried to live off his salary, but not always successfully. To limit their monthly expenses, he and his wife Catherine bought a ranch house far from Silicon Valley, in the town of Moraga, for $750,000 — by Valley standards a modest sum.
But they spent $350,000 on extensive remodeling — causing them, not for the first time, to dip deeply into their nest egg.
Today, he has roughly $1.2 million left in savings and another several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of home equity, Mr. Barbagallo said, with one child in college and a second on her way.
So he works as hard as ever, logging more than 70 hours a week at a San Francisco start-up.
“Poor Tony, he’ll never be able to retire,” Catherine Barbagallo said.
Chasing the Top 0.1 Percent
Many of these millionaires have options, of course, beyond working hard to earn another $5 million to $10 million. A few even choose to jump off the golden treadmill.
That is what Mark Gage, 51, an engineer, and his wife, Meredith, did when they left the Bay Area in 2005 with $3 million or so in assets. They bought a house in Bend, Ore. — “a bigger, much nicer home with dramatic views” — and now Mr. Gage works only when the perfect consulting job presents itself.
Yet the same drive that earned so many of the engineers and entrepreneurs who live here their fortunes keeps them tied to the Valley, which resembles nothing so much as a sprawling post-war suburb, though one whose roadways are thick with cars costing in the six figures.
Umberto Milletti has fantasized about downsizing his life to ease the financial pressures he feels despite a net worth around $5 million. In 2000, when his stake in DigitalThink, the online learning company he co-founded in 1996, was worth around $50 million, he bought his family of four a five-bedroom house in Hillsborough, an upscale suburb south of San Francisco. After his net worth fell 90 percent, though, he found the house more of an albatross than a dream.
“We could move,” Mr. Milletti said. “But if you do that, then you’re admitting defeat. No one wants to go backwards.”
So he works 60 to 70 hours a week at InsideView, an online sales intelligence company he co-founded in 2005, in part to prove that his first success was not a fluke — but also to meet his monthly nut, which includes payments on a seven-figure mortgage.
Silicon Valley offers an unusual twist on keeping up with the Joneses. The venture capitalist two doors down might own a Cessna Citation X private jet. The father of your 8-year-old’s best friend, who has not worked for two years, drives a bright yellow Ferrari. Temptations loom everywhere.
“You see how much money you have in the bank,” Mr. Koblas, the computer programmer, said, “and your eyes get really big.” He described it as “upsizing your life to your cash flow.”
Then there are the additional burdens on this digital elite, said Ms. Holland, the psychologist — demands they are typically not prepared to handle.
“There are all these people who come to you for money,” Ms. Holland said. “Siblings, parents, other relatives. Organizations seeking charitable contributions. There’s this assumption you have all this money — so why don’t you write a big check to the school or to this other charity?”
Other pressures can come from within the social circle. Mr. Barbagallo, for instance, remembers when several couples tried cajoling his wife and him — unsuccessfully — to fly to Las Vegas for a charity event featuring Andre Agassi.
“You look around,” Mr. Barbagallo said, “and the pressures to spend more are everywhere.” Children want the latest fashions their peers are wearing and the most popular high-ticket toys. Furniture does not seem up to snuff once you move into a multimillion-dollar home. Spouses talk, and now that resort in Mexico the family enjoyed so much last winter is not good enough when looking ahead to next year. Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats.
To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.
“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.
“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/05/business/05rich1_lg.jpg
A few million doesn’t go as far as it used to.” NAME Hal Steger AGE 51 NET WORTH $3.5 million CURRENT JOB Marketing executive
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:35 (eighteen years ago)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/05/business/05rich2_lg.jpg
“The pressures to spend more are everywhere.” NAME Tony Barbagallo AGE 44 Net Worth $1.5 Million CURRENT JOB Product management
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)
"working-class millionaires"
― Martin Van Burne, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/05/business/05rich3_lg.jpg
“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’” NAME Celeste Baranski AGE 49 NET WORTH $5 Million CURRENT JOB Co-founder, software start-up
That guy may be on a budget, but he should really hire a personal fashion advisor. I will do it for free, just because I feel so bad about his trouser-fit.
― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)
in other news:
"Efforts to free miners trapped in Utah unsuccessful so far"
Not that it probably isn't rough in the "Silicon Valley salt mines", I'm sure it is!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:39 (eighteen years ago)
"Summer camp, a full-time housekeeper, vintage wines, country clubs: the cost of living bloats."
― Martin Van Burne, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)
lol class
― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)
“The pressures to spend more are everywhere.”
i'm thinking the pressure should be a little greater on this guy to buy some patio furniture. where does he sit back there?
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)
He gave it all to the nanny. He sleeps on his chaise-long.
― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:43 (eighteen years ago)
my favorite times article this year is similar (well, maybe second after saturday's piece about the guy who built a working replica of a revolutionary war era sub and mounted an incursion against the qe2 off red hook):
AMAZING +: Driven to Excel; For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
April 1, 2007, Sunday By SARA RIMER (NYT); National Desk Late Edition - Final, Section 1, Page 1, Column 1, 4595 words
DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn't measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight. ''First of all, I'm a terrible athlete,'' ...
some of those poor kids will not get into an ivy league school!!!!!!
― edb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)
I thought that first pic was Albee from Big Love.
Yeah, Another "Million bucks doesn't go far in Silicon Valley" SHOCKAH!
― schwantz, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)
and don't get me wrong, i don't hate rich people. my wardrobe and my library have been immeasurably enriched by the cast-offs of dead rich people. i just think that congress should pass a law making it illegal for anyone with a million dollars in the bank to ever complain in public about money.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)
They're just workin' for the man.
(I'd rather read about the Silicon Valley underlings of these upper-middle management types - how's Silicon Valley living on $100k a year guy? $20k for the janitorial staff?)
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:53 (eighteen years ago)
I think it's worthwhile to do an article on, well, the 'working rich,' or on social equality with respect to a class of wealthy people, or even on 'millionaire' not meaning what it once did (though, duh), but how many 'this is what the rich are up to' articles does the NYT have to do? Does it sell papers for them?
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:54 (eighteen years ago)
xp
where'd you get the 20k figure from, milo?
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)
Anyway, what kind of self-pitying dipshit agrees to be interviewed for a story like that anyway?
More taxes. Now.
― Martin Van Burne, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)
or the 100k figure?
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)
it crawled out of his ass
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:56 (eighteen years ago)
how many of them had money invested in those now-belly up bear stearns hedge funds?!?
anyway, i saw this headline this sunday -- i didn't actually READ it, but i was still curious in a really morbid way. not to mention that the NYT could've stuck to their own backyard & saved the money on airfare to silicon valley, gone to (say) chelsea or tribeca and found a few Wall Street/BigLaw asshats to bitch about how "only" a mil or two doesn't go very far in Manhattan any more.
― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)
xp - The median income of Santa Clara County is $85k. Not everyone can be a 'working-class millionaire,' after all.
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)
well, I imagine the NYT might have a body or two in or around Silicon Valley (and such airfare really isn't very expensive), but I do wonder generally how much such articles (especially the style section ones) are motivated by reporters wanting to get in on the action
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)
the median income in Arlington, TX is $48K
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:02 (eighteen years ago)
the median income on the Upper East Side is $65k.
not sure what the point of this little exchange has been.
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:03 (eighteen years ago)
you guys are trying to see who can be the biggest dick?
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)
(just kidding, milo you win that race every time)
the median family income in Marfa, TX is $32k which may explain why the locals hate everyone
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:05 (eighteen years ago)
nah i'm rooting for gabbneb! x-post
― strgn, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:14 (eighteen years ago)
i'm illustrating that your reference points may be rather off-base, milo. assuming they're correct for Arlington, translating them into santa clara county, the janitor makes 35k and the upper middle management dude makes 178k. (which isn't exactly true because we're not using individual incomes, and in any event your figure is wrong at least according to wikipedia. in actuality it looks like the janitor would make ~29k and the upper middle management dude would make ~145-150k).
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:23 (eighteen years ago)
um, gabbneb, I said: "Silicon Valley underlings of these upper-middle management types"
Now, since the median income of Silicon Valley is $85k, I think it's safe to assume that there are individuals earning slightly more - and also individuals earning far less. Nothing about reference points or local wages or anything else.
Do read next time, will ya?
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)
...
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:31 (eighteen years ago)
$100K in DC is making fucking rent and paying off loans and credit card debt. Once in a while I buy a new TV or some speakers or a new computer to run Ableton. I drink too much. I try to save what I can for when I get the hell out of this hole. no sleep till brooklyn.
OTOH yeah silicon valley is a joke, there is absolutely no amount of money you could pay me to go work in one of those "los whatevers" or mountain view suburbs. All those people are 1. fucking crazy, 2. fucking nuts, 3. like some kind of nightmare nerd version of those hamptons/connecticut wall street commuter types. To think we still glamorize executives who work 60 hours a week just so they can enjoy a big empty house for a few dozy hours on Sunday is the biggest and most disgusting part of the American Dream.
100% estate tax NOW. Bonus: this would wipe out the LNS crowd.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:32 (eighteen years ago)
and by 60 hours a week of course I mean 80-90, what was I thinking, the week has 168 hours in it
100% estate tax NOW.
Seconded.
― Martin Van Burne, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)
remember how lindsay lohan's friends used to give her shit about only making $7 million by age 20. they were right.
― sunny successor, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:34 (eighteen years ago)
xp - Tombot's first paragraph is what I was getting at before gabbneb started being gabbneb: a story about people who would be (very) comfortable elsewhere in the country but have to struggle in Silicon Valley (or DC) would be far more interesting than a story about people who are already (very) comfortable in Silicon Valley but would just be fuckin' rich anywhere else.
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)
has there ever been a child who thought that what they wanted to do when they grew up was to put on some pleated pants and play some golf with a blackberry holster? Is there anybody who actually thinks that's cool?
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)
TOMBOT 100% OTM.
also, repeal of estate tax repeal = the "keep Eisbaer employed in the future act" :-)
― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/brainiac/keaton.jpg
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)
wtf does the estate tax have to do with this?
― bell_labs, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:36 (eighteen years ago)
My family all live in the south and I think they would probably be very, very confused if I were to tell them my living situation vs. my salary.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)
a story about people who would be (very) comfortable elsewhere in the country but have to struggle in Silicon Valley (or DC)
if they worked elsewhere in the country, they wouldn't make as much
― gabbneb, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)
if the estate tax were 100%, you might have a few more people thinking for a second about what it actually means to have money vs. have a life, instead of just assuming it'll be nice for the kids to have a couple mil to kick around
the working lots of hours thing goes both ways. working a lot in general is glamorized in this country. whether you work 3 jobs and have no money (bootstrap stories, ya know. single mother going to school part time and working three jobs and then getting her degree in egyptology or whatever) or work a lot and make tons of money.
x-post to something. i can't remember...
― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)
xxxp - Are there people who grow up dreaming of the day they can enter dental school?
― milo z, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)
"elsewhere in the country" doesn't have the bizarre venture capital bubble-world that silicon valley does - you're being disingenuous, gabbneb, it has nothing to do with cost of living
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)
-- gabbneb, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 11:37 AM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Link
@%DEGw984tq#$^YQ#%(QEGA*()EHGQ#L#I5q34utvpn9qt7p3u9gb7q3%&B@^(*&W$%YJB($Y$W
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)
oh I'm sorry I meant to type FUCK YOURSELF
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)
journalists should resist the temptation to just give up and do what their advertisers want, which is write about nothing but "lifestyle porn"
if you disagree with that, gabbneb, i guarantee you can have a long and fruitful career in "journalism"
my point was nothing to do with the actual subject of these pieces though, it's about the way they're reported, which i find spineless and nauseating - "portraying" society demands more than this, i'm afraid
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)
i enjoy "quote" marks
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)
I have been bothered lately by stories that trivialize wealth inequality by making it sound as though the only thing wrong with it is that it makes the people on the bottom feel less good about themselves.
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)
This is nowhere NEAR as good as the article where the people with the $600k house complained about having to walk to a community mailbox.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)
That one still brings joy to my heart when I think about it.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)
"opinion is divided on whether the wealthy are, in fact, gods, or just supermen; whatever the answer, we'll tell you where they shop and what they buy!"
BOOM, PORTRAY'D
ask away
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)
xp Because as Katt Williams once said, "Bitch it's called SELF-ESTEEM, that's esteem of your motherfucking self. How am I gonna fuck up how you feel about you, simple bitch?"
― Kerm, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)
A related bit of reading, from 10+ years ago: James Fallows writing on Why Americans Hate the Media
― kingfish, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)
gabbneb i hope you never watched bill moyers.
― hstencil, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:00 (eighteen years ago)
i guess you missed my dream with him. these days, i might keep him on for a while if something else i'm watching leads into him, but i wonder what he thinks he's accomplishing telling people things they already know; sometimes i wonder if his intention is just to record this stuff for posterity.
― gabbneb, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:05 (eighteen years ago)
sometimes i wonder if his intention is just to record this stuff for posterity.
gosh no virtue in that is there. who needs history?
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:11 (eighteen years ago)
sorry, I know I shouldn't bother
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)
yeah, if not for bill moyers, no one would write this stuff down
― gabbneb, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:15 (eighteen years ago)
kingfish: that exchange with Jennings and Wallace... wow.
I'm watching that episode online right now: http://www.learner.org/resources/series81.html (free registration required)
― Kerm, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:17 (eighteen years ago)
i guess you missed my dream with him. these days, i might keep him on for a while if something else i'm watching leads into him, but i wonder what he thinks he's accomplishing telling people things they already know; sometimes i wonder if his intention is just to record this stuff for posterity.-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 7:05 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Linkyeah, if not for bill moyers, no one would write this stuff down-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 7:15 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Link
-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 7:05 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 7:15 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Link
"buying the war" was on last night. the whole point of moyers' work in that particularly fantastic piece of journalism exploring the buying and selling of the iraq war was that someone was writing, but they worked for knight-ridder and nobody cared.
― hstencil, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)
it was particularly fantastic? i guess i judged incorrectly when i turned it off after 10 minutes. i already knew, tho, that knight ridder's coverage had been good and it had been fucked in the media consolidation wars. moyers and other people seem to be missing the point that the problem might lie as much or more with consumers as with producers of media.
― gabbneb, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:36 (eighteen years ago)
sometimes i'm convinced you're a republican. it would be okay to just admit it if you were.
― hstencil, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 19:37 (eighteen years ago)
gabbneb, noted for his party disloyalty. i think the government should be democratic, the media should be non-partisan, the democrats should get some game, and the people should pay attention.
― gabbneb, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)
and yet you're still a dick. congrats.
― hstencil, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 21:57 (eighteen years ago)
now now, everybody play nice. One man's apologist is another man's, uh...
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 22:01 (eighteen years ago)
look at shakey, trying to be nice!
― hstencil, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 22:01 (eighteen years ago)
i'm sorry for being mean to bill moyers. he's a very nice man.
― gabbneb, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 22:08 (eighteen years ago)
I wish we could avoid ad hom attacks like this on threads that aren't going so badly otherwise, but one of you guys probably "zing" me for saying so. Fire away.
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)
hey man I only do sarcasm. namecalling not so much.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 23:22 (eighteen years ago)
I was really hoping some people would talk about "Blank Check." Sometimes I feel like I made that movie up.
― Abbott, Thursday, 9 August 2007 01:13 (eighteen years ago)
didn't it also star Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise?
― milo z, Thursday, 9 August 2007 01:14 (eighteen years ago)
No, it didn't, but Tone Loc was in it.
― Abbott, Thursday, 9 August 2007 01:16 (eighteen years ago)
Oh man, the IMDB "goofs" for this movie are GREAT. I love the research and care put into them:
Continuity: When Preston goes to cash his million dollar check the owner of the bank gives him the money, and if you look at the bills they are all ten and five dollar bills. This means there were between 100,000 and 150,000 bills Preston would have to fit in his backpack. This is extremely unbelievable for Preston to carry; there's too many bills, and it would probably weigh a good thirty pounds as well.
Revealing mistakes: When Preston throws the money in the air in his bedroom, you can see some of the backs are blank (mostly on the bed).
Revealing mistakes: The license plate on the limo reads "EZ-LIFE" as the car pulls away from the water fountain scene. Once the driver drops off Shay and pulls away the license is a numerical one.
Factual errors: When Preston calculates the time required to accumulate one million dollars from the birthday check, the answer is in error by several times. The movie shows the time as 342,506 years. If the interest is calculated yearly, it should take 338 years, or monthly it should take 331 years and 7 months.
Factual errors: Preston's expense report towards the end of the movie indicates that he spent $999,667.83. However, after calculating the math and tracking the listed expenses with their appearances through the movie, the actual amount Preston had spent at this time totaled $504,879.08. Meaning he still had nearly half the money left.
― Abbott, Thursday, 9 August 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)
Shakey, just assume that I reject your whole perspective, ok?-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 6:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link
-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 8, 2007 6:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link
I never remember who most people are on ILX. I'd appreciate a chart of who zings who, a dummy's guide to who snarls at who with most regularity. so Shakey and gabbneb are on different sides of something? TOMBOT also seems quick to YELL at a few characters. Probably shouldn't stir the pot. I'm offtopic.
― Maria :D, Thursday, 9 August 2007 05:38 (eighteen years ago)
shakey likes to publicly celebrate the deaths and misfortunes of people that he does not like for whatever reason. he has decent taste in music, though.
gabbneb is ILXor's local Democratic Leadership Council commissar. sometimes he's right and sometimes he isn't.
tombot likes to yell at a few characters, and is often one of ILXor's most sensible regular posters (IMHO) -- which may be why he ends up yelling a lot.
― Eisbaer, Thursday, 9 August 2007 06:00 (eighteen years ago)
i thought he was on meth
― gershy, Thursday, 9 August 2007 06:05 (eighteen years ago)
he said "most sensible"
― Kerm, Thursday, 9 August 2007 06:13 (eighteen years ago)
most insensate
― gershy, Thursday, 9 August 2007 06:18 (eighteen years ago)
least likely to suffer a fool
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)
And thank god for that.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)
ALL CAPS IS NOT YELLING. THIS IS YELLING.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 9 August 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)
Shakey, just assume that I reject your whole perspective, ok?
i am still roffling at this
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 9 August 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)
SO IF THIS IS NOT YELLING WHAT IS IT THEN
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 9 August 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)
SPEAKING WITH A SENSE OF PURPOSE.
LIKE BARACK OBAMA.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 9 August 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)
HAMMA RAMMA JAMMA
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 9 August 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)
anybody see the thursday styles section today? lolz.
― hstencil, Thursday, 9 August 2007 16:56 (eighteen years ago)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/fashion/09STICKER.html?ref=style
are you talking about this article? the revelation that there is snob appeal in buying something which is out of the reach of most people is shocking. even more shocking is the news that ultraluxury goods are very expensive!
― lauren, Thursday, 9 August 2007 17:07 (eighteen years ago)
lolol @ dying medium
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 9 August 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)
no i meant this one:
August 9, 2007 Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye By ALLEN SALKIN
MARTHA FLACH mentioned meat twice in her Match.com profile: “I love architecture, The New Yorker, dogs ... steak for two and the Sunday puzzle.”
She was seeking, she added, “a smart, funny, kind man who owns a suit (but isn’t one) ... and loves red wine and a big steak.”
The repetition worked. On her first date with Austin Wilkie, they ate steak frites. A year later, after burgers at the Corner Bistro in Greenwich Village, he proposed. This March, the rehearsal dinner was at Keens Steakhouse on West 36th Street, and the wedding menu included mini-cheeseburgers and more steak.
Ms. Wilkie was a vegetarian in her teens, and even wore a “Meat Is Murder” T-shirt. But by her 30s, she had started eating cow. By the time she placed the personal ad, she had come to realize that ordering steak on a first date had the potential to sate appetites not only of the stomach but of the heart.
Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,” she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.” She added, “In terms of the burgers, it said I’m a cheap date, low maintenance.”
Salad, it seems, is out. Gusto, medium rare, is in.
Restaurateurs and veterans of the dating scene say that for many women, meat is no longer murder. Instead, meat is strategy. “I’ve been shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak,” said Michael Stillman, vice president of concept development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group, which opened the restaurant Quality Meats in April 2006 on West 58th Street. He said Quality Meats’ contemporary design and menu, including extensive seafood offerings, were designed to attract more women than a traditional steakhouse. “But the meat is appealing to them, much more than what I saw two or three years ago at our other restaurants,” Mr. Stillman said. “They are going for our bone-in sirloin and our cowboy-cut rib steak.”
In an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date, and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike. For some women, that is still the practice. “It’s better not to have a jalapeño fajita plate, especially on the first date,” said Andrea Bey, 28, who sells video surveillance equipment in Irving, Tex., and describes herself as “curvy.” “You don’t want to be labeled as ‘princess gassy’ on the first date.”
But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.
“It seems wimpy, insipid, childish,” said Michelle Heller, 34, a copy editor at TV Guide. “I don’t want to be considered vapid and uninteresting.”
Ordering meat, on the other hand, is a declarative statement, something along the lines of “I am woman, hear me chew.”
In fact, red meat on a date has become such an effective statement of self-acceptance that even a vegetarian like Sloane Crosley, a publicist at Random House, sometimes longs to order a burger.
“Being a vegetarian puts you at a disadvantage,” Ms. Crosley said. “You’re in the most basic category of finicky. Even women who order chicken, it isn’t enough.” She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”
“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson,” Ms. Crosley, 28, said.
Not all red meat, apparently, is equal in the dating world. The mediums of steak and hamburger each send a different message. Dropping into conversation the fact that steaks of Kobe beef come from Wagyu cattle, but that not all steaks sold as Wagyu are Kobe beef, demonstrates one’s worldliness, said Gabriella Gershenson, a dining editor at Time Out New York. It holds the same currency today that being able to name Hemingway’s four wives held in an earlier era.
Hamburgers, she added, say you are down-to-earth, which is why women rarely order those deluxe hamburgers priced as high as a porterhouse.
“They’re created for men who want to impress women, so they order the $60 burger, then they let the woman taste it,” Ms. Gershenson said. “The man gets to show off his expertise and show that he can afford it.”
When Paris Hilton was arrested for driving under the influence, she announced that she had been on her way to In-N-Out Burger, the Southern California chain revered for its gut-busting Double-Double, as if trying to satisfy a craving for two slabs of meat and cheese was an excuse for drunken driving that anyone could understand. And twice last year, Nicole Richie, persistently facing rumors that she suffered from an eating disorder, was photographed biting into burgers in Los Angeles, an effort that seemed designed to demonstrate her casualness toward calories.
Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.
Saehee Hwang, 30, a production director at Artnet.com, found herself out with friends at DuMont restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when she started feeling attracted to a new guy in the group. She said she had wanted to order a burger, but started having second thoughts. “I didn’t want to appear too much of a carnivore,” she said. “It might be off-putting.”
But then she decided she should not change her order to fit a preconceived idea of what a man might want. She ordered the house specialty, a half-pound of beef on a toasted brioche bun with Gruyère cheese. “We started dating afterward,” Ms. Hwang said. “And he told me he liked the fact that I ordered the burger.”
What about when the tables, so to speak, are reversed? Can a man order a juicy New York strip on the first date and make a good impression? Gentlemen, be careful. Real men, it seems, must eat kale.
“When a guy sits down and eats something fatty and big, you wonder if they eat like that all the time,” said Brice Gaillard, a freelance design writer. “It crosses my mind they’ll probably die early.”
― hstencil, Thursday, 9 August 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)
Does "earlier era" mean 1926?
― milo z, Thursday, 9 August 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)
this is the thread for batshit gray lady staff writers
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 9 August 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)
I intentionally do not read Thursday Styles. I often read Sunday Styles though. It's like at least 20% there's someone I know or have heard of in there.
― gabbneb, Thursday, 9 August 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)
There's something deeply fascinating about this blog. It is by the guy who runs the taxi company Uber.
http://swooshing.wordpress.com/
He says things like this:
"At the end of the day RTS is about travel adventures with other like-minded people, in our case technology entrepreneurs. We make sure to take some down time and hang out, talking shop, jamming on new ideas and life. But at the end of the day we’re constantly looking out for adventurous times. We like to ask ourselves the question, “How do we turn the dial up?” The answer has ranged from creating a flashmob Reykjavik house party to attending an inspiring music concert with diplomats and dignitaries in Cape Verde’s congressional hall, to virtual anarchy on the street markets of Dakar (and a whole lot in between).
For me RTS has been about making the Flat World my world, and living life as an experience. The more stories I come home with, the better the trip. And taking a week or two a year to change your environment in an extreme way to see the world differently… that’s living. The great thing is anybody can create their own Random Traveler’s Society. Giddy up!! Get your globes out. We’ll see you in Argentina next year!"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 20 May 2012 22:47 (thirteen years ago)
https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.f88oijzft
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, 20 February 2016 01:58 (ten years ago)
jesus christ. move to kansas city. move to charlotte, north carolina. these places are not really that bad. you can get a shitty customer service job there and eat real food that you buy from actual grocery stores!
i hate california. it should be depopulated, and probably will be soon (or within 100 years)! thank god.
― Gatemouth, Saturday, 20 February 2016 04:05 (ten years ago)