Sunday, January 7th, 2001
Hares: Lesley Brough & Kyle Krall
On-in: Ellen O'Dee's, 40th & Lex
Scribe: Heather Malloy
Occasionally, someone asks how I come up with things to say for the writeup
each week. It used to be easy, but lately, I've had a hard time finding inspiration.
It has gotten much tougher since May. Non-British Dave doesn't want us to discuss
politics. Feinsod doesn't want to hear about the trail. Bahamonde wants to know
exactly how many times he is mentioned before accepting a copy. DB2 brings a
copy of Little, Brown to check for grammatical accuracy. Any number of people
don't want me to detail Sunday's events.
I've decided to rectify this problem by talking about my professional life,
a topic no doubt endlessly fascinating for everyone. For example, 2 through
10 year Euro swaps have been constricted over the last eighteen months, especially
as compared to similar indices over the mirrored range overseas. In fact, the
Dutch 5-year reflects this downturn in volatility in its matched rate through
the same 12-over-12. This would appear to underscore my original feeling that
the higher credit quality of underlying product would point toward unparalleled
opportunity to increase exposure to the higher-yielding tranches of collateralized
synthetic and mortgage-backed obligations.* Now, I know a lot of you have been
asking about index-amortizing swaptions, so….
I'll talk about the trail.
The first thing that I thought upon arrival at the New York Public Library start
was "Ellen O'Dees." My next thought was "Is it July?" A summer size pack had
gathered on the steps, and in honor of the crowds, an unusual number of men
were wearing shorts, adding to the illusion of fair weather. I mean sure, it
was sunny, but shorts? We trotted off north, circling quickly back down to the
library, making the first, and smallest, of a lot of overlapping circles. The
checks were sufficiently tricky, putting Alice at the front of the pack at least
once, but not so tricky as to piss us off. The hares demonically ran us around
and around midtown, using the same square mile for over an hOnce down-downs
and some exceedingly garlicky slices were dispensed with, the crowd got down
to some serious drinking.our and passing so close to Ellen O'Dees a few times
that we could taste the beer. Foolishly, we followed the trail anyway winding
up just where we expected.
Ellen O'Dees was just about empty when we arrived, and the bartenders were overjoyed
to see us. JMs Gilbert and Trunfio gathered everyone around for down downs as
soon as Sarah and Lipstick Leslie had spent their customary forty-five minutes
each in the ladies' room, first calling up hares Lesley and Kyle, who were roundly
castigated for failing to actually screw anything up, while still managing to
be thoroughly sadistic. Next up were a group of virgins, including Patrick,
Olaf, Pam, Audrey, and Lori. Elaine got busted for demonstrating down-down technique.
Alleged transplant Melissa drank for having moved to New York years ago. Fluffy
got one for his new, east village hair. Sung Hee was called up for resurfacing
just in time to move to London. Peter then held the rabbit ears aloft, first
calling back Sung Hee, then banishing her for cabbing. Then Steve Yeoman came
up, but he, too, was thrown out for shortcutting. Finally, Andy Raybould wore
the ears for being honestly just too fast for someone who actually ran the trail.
And lastly, AOTW went to the obvious choice, Mike Hoffman.
Ellen O'Dees is one of the rarest of NYC bars, the ones that love us, can't
get enough of us. This being, at the most basic level, a fundamentally suspect
attitude, we haven't used them much over the past year. Believe it or not, they
actually missed us. Anxious to get us back, they have formed some sort of conspiracy
to make it impossible to spend all the hash cash. On the face of it, one would
think that this would be a good thing. Ask Steve whether this is the case. Or
Bob. Bob seemed to take it as his personal mission to drink all the beer to
maintain basic public safety standards for the rest of us. A noble thought,
but self-sacrificial. After about four pitchers, Bob commandeered Leslie's famous
lipstick, and proceeded to kiss everyone in sight, on whatever body part was
convenient, or proffered. That category included Ed Lynch's ass, and Michele's
cleavage. Such was the staying power of Leslie's lipstick that Michele was still
sporting a kiss print on Wednesday. Then there was Steve. As a warmup for the
upcoming Burns supper, Elaine bought a round or two of Scotch, which didn't
help Steve at all. When Steve gets it in his head to start drinking, he does
it in unforgettable fashion. This, even for Steve, was a doozy. Something about
that Scotch put him in the mood for love, but unfortunately, it didn't have
the same effect on his various objects of desire. Chasing Michele around the
bar wasn't effective, so he started pawing at Christine. Laird arrived just
in time to rescue her, and she dashed off to take cover behind Crofty. Suavester
Steve followed, forcing Crofty to defend her honor by taking a swing at him
(some describe it as a push), but missing, and spilling Christine's beer all
over him, instead. Not that Steve noticed. He then retired to a chair to nap,
attracting the attention of three tourists, who had their picture taken with
him. However, his heroics weren't for naught, as they inspired the remaining
men to form a gauntlet of sorts, kissing the departing women in succession as
they escaped into the safety of the New York night. On out.