My New Favorite Astro

[can you believe the Royals let this guy get away?]

Have you caught the fever yet, Astros fans? I'm talking about Runelvys Hernandez fever. In an effort to speed up this season's historical chase of the 1927 Yankees , the Astros have added fireball pitcher and competitive eating champion Runelvys Hernandez to the roster, shoring up their one weakness since the Chacon incident.

RH is listed as weighing 250 pounds on a 6' 1'' frame. Gross the weight up 10% and net the height down the same to account for media guide propaganda, and you've probably got one of the heaviest players ever to actually break through all four tiers of the minor leagues and get to the Show. Bill James in his millenial reference guide* cites Cecil Fielder as the heaviest player of the 1990s at 261 pounds, so RH likely surpasses this particular epochal record.

Don't worry though--Runny is sporting a 10.29 ERA, which means, statistically speaking, that he is "due" for some big wins.

Quite a mane too, eh?

*Clearly I've been reading this one lately

Clarification

My buddy Spill has added his two cents to the debate over Austin bars and how not-awesome each of his detritus bars are--closely tracking the format that I used.

A couple of things I need to address:

1) The question of 'when does a restaurant become a bar?' For the purposes of this debate, we'll follow the Ernie Banks rule set out by baseball historian and statistician Bill James. If you followed that hyperlink, you'd notice that Ernie Banks, a Hall of Fame Chicago Cub, spent years 22-30 at shortstop and years 30-40 or so at 1B and 3B. He is ranked by Bill James in his millenial tome as the 5th greatest shortstop of all time based on the "where did he bring the most to the table?" principle. That is: Ernie Banks had Hall of Fame credentials at SS, but probably just "good" stats at 1B/3B--AND--everything he brought to the table at 1B/3B should be counted, on a discounted basis, toward his SS ranking.

This is relevant to the discussion of Cain and Abel's which is, of course, a restaraunt in the sense that-yes-you can order food during the daytime and a waitress will come around and take your order. They'll even put some food on your plate and send you one of those foldy bill holders at the end of the meal and expect the standard 20% tip.

But who among us actually considers this place a restaraunt? Who takes a date out for dinner and says "hey-let's grab some fajitas at Cain and Abel's?" No one, right? Almost all the value it brings to the table is as a bar. This isn't true for Kenichi--where they have a pretty cool bar, but 90% of its value comes through its great sashimi and air-polluting hot rock beef. This isn't true for Malaga, where you can grab some great wine, but you're politely encouraged to please-try-some-tapas-off-of-an-awkward food-holding tower-or-we-won't-let-you-sit-in-the-main-area-type deal.

I think you'd have to suspend a lot of your cognitive reasoning to disqualify C&A as a bar just because it has a couple of waitresses and tables.

2) Can't believe I forgot Speakeasy, whose review I'll add as an appendix to the top ten list (it would probably rank #12 or so). Spill is right though; those steps are a killer.

3) I see that Spill is having a suspense-filled day-by-day introduction of his top ten, ala a properly administered game of elimination credit card roulette. I'm not so ambitious. I'll be introducing my top ten in two blocks of five. 10-6 comes some time this week.

Other topics we'll soon be covering: 1. the Carl Ichan/Yahoo situation 2. a book review of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World 3. a mailbag, where we'll answer reader mail.

I think I've used my annual quota of hyphens here.

Detritus Ex Austiniax

Or is it Ex Austiniam? I don't really know. Despite the many Roman numerals in my name, I'm not completely brushed up on the proper use of the Latin ablative declension.

So anyway, your old friend Mike F.M. Pemulis IV tried to whittle down a list of ten top Austin bars...and I came up with over 25 worth mentioning. And that excludes restaraunts, places like Kenichi, Malaga, Hula Hut, Maiko, Uchi and others that have entrenched themselves into Pemulan lore. Also excludes Stubbs, Alamo Drafthouse, Zona Rosa, Antone's, Zilker Park and other such venues. Good god Austin was a cool town.

Per the post title's suggestion, we're clearing through the detritus now--those marginal fifteen bars that, through one fatal flaw or another, were excluded from the top ten list.

So what do these schwug bars have in common? Large "second wave" populations, difficulty in getting a God damn drink sometime tonight, poor navigability and lappability, poor lighting/music gratuitously loud, general grunginess (especially the prevalence of non-partitioned bathrooms), and, perhaps most importantly, low BA/OBP/Slg numbers for MFMP IV. Unlike the top ten, these won't be in order:

11) 219 West--Alright, this one's number eleven, but I'm not ranking any others in this post. I really wanted 219 to crack the top ten, but, ultimately, it's a happy hour place-a pregame stop at best. And if you can't get a table by the bar, you're pretty much squeezed against or leaning over other people. The location is great for pregaming though, as it's within a short walk of three of the top ten bars which will be named later. Also, I hit a HR off of Greaseball's girlfriend's sister after a few drinks there, which was a nice capstone case if you will.

Qua--we all know about the baby sharks swimming under the dance floor. Otherwise it's just kind of an awkward place. Lighting is poor and conversation is impossible because of the blaring haus.

Logan's--I like Logan's; really I do. I even like the novelty of their interrupting the music and showing funny movie clips on the flat screens that are all over the place. But the lighting is just way too dark. Fives become sevens and sevens become nines. You might have some regrets later, man, like triples or more off of Single A talent. Weird men's room too (no place to set your beer; it's like they designed it so you can't set one down, even for a second).

Star Bar--it's kind of the inverse of 219 West in that it's a place you go to close 'er out, but you're not picking anyone up there. Coffee is for closers and so is Star Bar, but these kind of specialist places aren't going to make the top ten. Best martinis in town. You'll see the SAE Class of '98 type here.

Spill--I have a friend who likes this bar so much that his callsign on this blog is actually Spill. But I have to disagree--Spill (the bar) is deeply flawed. The crowd is definition Second Wave, they do not stock Johnnie Walker Black, and the place always smells like vomit. Also there's a line, which is borderline insulting.

Molotov's--this place is pretty bleh; I never got why so many people like it. It's got a decent deck on the 2nd floor. I actually have a decent OBP here too. If I were ranking these, it'd be probably 18 or so, but that is more a testament to Austin's superlativity than Molotov's mediocrity.

Betsy's--why is this place connected to Hi/Lo? They have nothing in common as bars. Anyway, Betsy's has a TV connected to an Atari in the back room which has comfortable couches. One time I was there with then-consort Reebok and her friend TexMex. TexMex was unbelievable at Centipede and Pong and she was born in 1986. It really floored me.

(I have two "assists" relating to TexMex, by the way. I feel like Esquire and Powerpoint* really owe me more "dap" for those assists. They were more like alleyoops)

Shakespeare's--Pass.

Lavaca St Bar--great location, easy to get a drink, very friendly staff, shuffleboard if you're bored. Sometimes even some decent talent. Just doesn't feel top ten though does it?

311--You really can't say enough bad things about this bar can you? It's thin and long and the bar sticks way out, meaning navigability is zero. Service is abysmally slow because they have these manual cash registers from the '30s--you pretty much have to order two or three drinks at a time. When you do get your drinks, you're always holding them way high up in the air so as not to spill them on the drunk people bumping into you. The bathrooms are the worst in Austin, having no partitions, no mirrors, no tiles on the floor, no functioning sinks. The band is always that same one headlined by the owner of the bar.

But they've got that dance floor, and, for some reason, you'll find probably the best college age talent in Austin there after 1am Friday and Saturday. I can't stand the bar, but I'm always delighted when someone suggests we go.

Blind Pig--I'm 0 for two years at this place. You could even argue that I'm sporting a negative batting average there, since I had to pull the ripcord on Azteca after running into TexMex, in full on spy mode, at an inoportune time. Yip-life handed me lemons, and I said "fuck those lemons" and bailed.

On the surface, it's a lot like Maggie Mae's (which will make the top ten), but it seems to be cursed; it's Austin's incarnation of Warehouse Live**

Peckerhead's--I apparently had an 'incident' at Peckerhead's once that my memory does not serve me well on. From what I hear, I had a pretty good time though, even if I almost lost a girlfriend in the process.

Pangaea--everyone here is a ten because their annual lighting expenses are something like three bucks, fifty. Having said that, it's a pretty cool place, if a bit out of place in Austin. It's carved out of the old 4th St Alamo Drafthouse (if I were to consider AD a "bar" it would be in the top five). Bottle service here ain't cheap, and there is always a crazy line, so you have to buy that bottle to get in. If you're a real hitter, you'll just buy the bar.

Treasure Island--Demographers say that by 2050, the white population of the United States will be a minority. If this is true, then TI is way, way ahead of its time. There is nothing wrong with this-or at least I won't admit there is something wrong with this-but this bar can be intimidating for skin types 1-3. My friend Tonian once wrote in the TBW that this was the worst bar in Austin; we agree on a lot of things, that Tonian and I, but this isn't the worst.

Pure--this is. It's a sordid attempt to copy and exploit the name brand of Las Vegas' Pure. They poured a lot of capex into making such a terrible bar, and though they get an E for effort, they get an F-plus for execution.

Chuggin Monkey--perfectly average sixth street bar. Bad navigability, but very friendly bartenders. Doesn't one of Dannibal's friends own it or something? Seems like something one of Dannibal's friends would do. I like the unpretentious name.

Oilcan Harry's--Gapeshow's favorite bar. This is not one of the three bars near 219 West that I was referencing earlier.

* You like the nickname ppt? That's what you get for becoming a consultant.
** A place in Houston at which MP has an incredibly bad record--an actual negative four for four with one set of slashed tires to boot. I won't go there anymore. They should just rename the place the Hindenburg Club.

Gossip Girl Update!!!! Gossip Girl Update!!!!

[With a plethora of distracting hyperlinks and footnotes]

The best looking girl on Gossip Girl is not Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, or or Georgina Sparks; it's Lily van der Woodsen, Serena's mom. She joins Julia Cooper-Nichol (from the O.C.), Kirsten Cohen (also from the O.C.), and Famke Jansen* (Nip/Tuck) in the "Moms who are better looking than their kids" pantheon--a pantheon, that, quite frankly, I'd like to see expanded, despite any implications about negative genetic drift.

Maybe I'm getting a bit long in the tooth, but I don't think the contest between her and the GG nymphets is even close. She just does it for me, you know? All the other characters have aesthetic flaws (alien-like features, brown hair), but not Lily van der Woodsen**.

There's an especially funny scene where the guy who looks like John Stamos is forced to choose between Lily and his kinda ok, but not-quite pulchritudinous wife--a choice forced on him by the wife!--and it's the worst mismatch since Rommel v. Gamelin, France 1940.

Let's hope we see more of Lily and other gorgeous snow leopards*** on this show and on many others.

[Editor's update: the follwing entry appears on the imdb page of the actress who plays Lily:

"Bodies of Evidence" .... Diana Wallace (1 episode, 1992) - Afternoon Delights (1992) TV episode .... Diana Wallace

end update]

*who turned out to be a post-op in the worst TV plot twist since the "it was all a dream" debacle that ruined Dallas.

**Is her name a play on Lily von Schtupp?

***Like a classier cougar

Dear IT Help Desk,

Hello,

Just now I attempted (and was blocked) from doing a Google search on “refinery crack spreads”, a measure of the gross margin experienced by oil refiners, in order to inform an assumption about a trade counterparty’s high pressure steam demand from a cogeneration plant whose capacity we are trying to rehedge and refinance. (The counterparty is one of said refiners).

I’m fairly certain I understand why I’m being blocked on this search; fyi they are called “crack spreads” because they refer to a refinery's catalytic cracker, which helps turn oil into gasoline. The refiner has a daily call option on the steam produced by the plant---steam which is used to facilitate the crack--so this research is non-trivial.

Thus, I was hoping that in this particular case the restriction on “crack spreads” be lifted.

Thanks,

Michael Pemulis
Corporate Finance
-----
--- Texas Ave., Ste. ----
Houston, Texas 77002

p.s. I promise not to use the results of this search to buy any crack.

The American Public Is Slightly Less Dumb

It's possible American democracy isn't a failed system backed by the votes of undereducated mongoloids; it's just very time-lagged, at least according to this survey.

Let's back up. In my schoolboy days, back at Vanderbilt, I took a geology 101-type class in anticipation of my entrance into the oil and gas reserve acquisition business in which our professor took an informal survey to determine our support for drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), where the somewhat endagered caribou make their home.

This was one of those auditorium size classes with 100+ students and only about three hands shot up in support of such drilling. Mine was one of them, because I'm a ruthless, speciocidal bastard, especially with regard to mammals that we don't eat on a massive scale.

The good professor then explained that there was ~$125 billion worth of oil in them thar hills on an estimated ultimate recovery basis, which we, as socially responsible citizens, had to weigh against the fate of the indigenous caribou, who would be allegedly harmed if a few rigs desecrated the icy hellscape there. I guess Blitzen et al were too important a consideration for the class, but the professor and I believed otherwise at the time.

That was 2003, when oil was trading at about 20-buck-a-barrel. Now that West Texas Intermediate is trading over $140 per barrel, those reserves, on a non-discounted basis, should be worth about $875 billion. Especially since the forward price curve on that light, sweet, and I must say, delicious, WTI isn't deeply backwardated.

I don't have a engineering report on the area, so I don't know the discounting convention or even a reserve/production ratio, but let's cut that in half to discount for present value and get a little back-of-the-envelope calc going. That's a $437 billion PV. Cash in the ground. Enough to cover half of the Iraq war to date. Let's gross that up to $500 billion because oil recovery techniques have improved in the last five years (a conservative gross up), so now we're talking 3-4% of our GDP, depending on which metric you believe. That's what they call in the metric system a "shitload."

Some very benighted politicians have blamed speculators for the run up in prices. We'll get to why this is one of the dumbest theories since intelligent design later, but the reason energy prices are high is because supply at price (p (t-1)) is less than demand at price (p(t-1). My former employer, Matt Simmons, called* this years ago, which is why your friend Mikey P got into that oil and gas game right out of college, after having seen the good Mr. Simmons present at the Coronado Club** in Houston as a 3rd year at Vandy.

Look, I'd be just fine with the American public continuing to restrict drilling in Alaska, in the East and West Coast offshore, and in our national parks--that's money in my pocket. Hell, I'm kind of supporting Obama in '08 because his energy plan is so retarded*** in the fact that it diverts resources to--I'll even say "speculative"--energy sources over proven conventional ones. Bad for the old USA but good for Mike Pemulis and his hometown of Houston. That's a trade I'll always make, at least till I own my own jet and/or ostrich boots become the business footwear norm nationwide once again.

*Blogger's being gee with hyperlinks here, just google the guy.

**Not the strip club, the eating club.

***control-F "solar" on this one.