The Time Warp Again

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A little over thirty years ago, I made my first trip to Palo Alto. I lived in a little town called Moraga in the East Bay, and some friends of my girlfriend (now my wife) were going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had never seen the movie (and if you know Rocky Horror, you know that you don’t really just sit there and watch it), and I had never been to Palo Alto. So, one night during a senior year in high school, off we went.

The place where they showed the movie was the Varsity theatre, a venerable cinema on University Avenue which had been there for decades. I had a great night, and I was practically rolling with laughter in the aisles from the movie. It was a very positive introduction to the town that would later become my home.

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Famous Encounters

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Now that – thank God – the Fed decision is out of the way, I thought we’d try a fun little project: let’s share stories about when we met (or bumped into) someone famous. I’m not talking about paid-for gigs (e.g. “I saw Paul Simon at the Paul Simon concert!” – – which, umm, I did, and it isn’t worth reporting) This is about chance encounters. Slopers are a diverse bunch, and I bet there are some interesting tales floating around out there. Here, I’ll begin, and I hope you’ll understand that, for obvious reasons, they tend to be tech-oriented:

Joe Montana – As some of you may recall, I wrote my first post on March 29 2005 from the Ritz in Cancun, Mexico. I had sold Prophet just two months earlier, and I had taken my wife and children on vacation. I remember Joe Montana took the elevator with us and counseled us to enjoy our kids since “they grow up fast.” As much of a cliche as that is, it certainly is true. I have no interest in sports, but I instantly recognized him, and we all pretended that he was just a regular guy. (Oh, and it’s true what they say – – celebrities are shorter in person!) (more…)

Cramer’s Sense of Smell

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I don’t think there’s been a blogger roaming the streets of Palo Alto more bearish on crude oil than me, and to date, that has worked well. Cramer famously announced a few weeks back that oil’s price “smells like a bottom” (which, again, is the kind of olfactory proclamation that passes for analysis, versus my carefully-crafted charts). I personally think the prospects for energy smell more like Cramer’s own bottom, but we shan’t explore the topic further.

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Government Brilliance In Action

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I’ve written before about Palo Alto’s clumsy attempts to prevent teen suicide by posting guards at two sections of railroad track here in town (which constitutes about 0.1% of the tracks available on which to fling yourself). To my knowledge, in spite of being posted there for five years now, these guards haven’t prevented a single suicide. I was always a little curious how much my fair city was spending on these guys, who basically sit on plastic chairs and stare into space all day. This morning’s paper gives me my answer:

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