I grew up believing God keeps His eye on us all.

I just got back from a too-brief visit to The Ancestral Homeland, a place that always makes me nostalgic for a past that never was. As I have surely said before, had my mother not dragged me away against my will at age 11 kicking and screaming, I almost certainly would have fled the place at age 18.

TAH is one of those places that makes you think of the song where Dar Williams sings "bet that crumbling mill town/was a booming mill town in its day." Massive factories built in the 1800s sit boarded up and economic redevelopment has been tried and failed probably a couple of dozen times since Amalgamated Industries and Acme Manufacturing started slowing production down in the 1960s. Amalgamated's building and logo still looms over downtown, with probably 5% of the workforce it had 30 years ago, and I think that the only reason the place is still running at all is that it's cheaper than paying to close it for good.

Like a lot of medium sized industrial towns, a 15 minute drive takes you into the sticks. The rolling hills outside of town were filled with the autumnal gold and scarlet of maple trees in sunlight. The weather was simply amazing -- clear and blue and comfortably cool. I drank some fresh cider and, like Proust and his cookie, was taken back to the past. In my case, it was to an apple-picking outing with my parents a few years before my dad got sick. Just before we left in the wood-paneled Country Squire, we stopped to watch them press the dropped apples to make cider, and then each drank some right from the press.

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.*

*(This and all italics courtesy of Mr. Jennifer Lopez, as written by Joseph Fiennes)

Who will shed a tear for the death of Merrill Lynch?

It is true that it died at the hand of The Market, its old friend, because of the foolishness of its recent leaders. Some now say that the specific Brutus in this tale may be Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan, and the dagger used was a $10 billion collateral call, but -- like Big Jules -- Merrill was the one who put itself in position to go down.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

Ah, but mighty Merrill wasn't always such a Wall Street player. It gained its size, its power, and its once-unimaginable buckets of money by retail brokerage. It was derisively referred to as "We The People" or "the thundering herd" because of its large number of branch offices in places like Omaha and Memphis and St. Louis. It created solid relationships with several generations of customers, and in essence rebuilt the country's capital markets (after the crippling blow of the Great Depression) by popularizing investments in stock with people who weren't children or grandchildren of Robber Barons. Upper middle class customers across the country poured money into the stock market for the first time through Merrill, and other firms followed the Bull from Wall Street to Main Street.

Merrill seemed to set the standard -- its training programs, its marketing, its approach were all emulated by its competitors. And for the most part, its offices were at the top of the pecking order in most towns. (For example, the chamber of commerce in my town always had the local Merrill branch manager on the executive committee. Partly because of longevity -- he had been around forever, while the Dean Witter/Smith Barney/PaineWebber guys seemed to shuffle in and out of town too quickly, and they got stuck on hospitality or running the golf tournament.)

Merrill changed, like we all do. And who knows how accurate the argument is that Stan O'Neal gutted the culture of Merrill, and that this cultural change is what is to blame for the death of Merrill by creating the short-term outlook that put the toxic sludge on its books. But it seems clear that O'Neal's regime did change Merrill by hiring leadership that had not grown up with Merrill, and firing or early retiring those who "bled Merrill blue." Hiring number-crunchers from other firms. Changing the retail brokers' relationships with their clients by such things as imposing dollar minimums for accounts and closing branches.

But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

Indeed. Tonight I shall have a Bushmills or three in mourning for the Merrill Lynch of Charlie Merrill, of Win Smith, and even of Don Regan. Up the Republic!

Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me.

Like Rufus, I have a hankering for short-term pleasure bought at the expense of long-term risk. At least the desire for that short-term pleasure, anyway.

Anyway, without spoiling the most recent Mad Men, I hope that the clues dropped (the Menken's shopping bad, Don's use of Rachel's husband's name at the club) mean that the Complicated Brunette in Don Draper's life is returning. I can so identify with Don's fall for her. A no-brainer, really: she's smart, hot, and amusing. What's not to like?

I met God this afternoon, riding on an uptown train.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the financial markets -- what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Wall Street to be born?

Jesus. I should know better than to read Yeats these days. Especially after having a cocktail or two. I blame my high school humanities teacher, who carved that poem into my psyche.

At any rate, my mood is dark because I spent most of this week in a conference room trying to hammer out an amicable resolution to a spat over a buy-out -- my gal sold her stake in a business, and her former partners stopped making the payments she is owed. The main guy on the other side is convinced that my gal is behind some big client pulling their account. (She assures me that she isn't, but also isn't hiding the fact that she is pleased by this.)

Anyway, back to the markets. I suspect that the economic turmoil will actually be a financial plus to me -- litigation is one of the things that increases when the markets decline. People sue more -- to force people to comply with deals, to get out of deals, to make their advisors pay for putting them in bad deals, etc. But the bigger picture concerns me. Since the debate appears to be back on (at least as I type this), it will be interesting to hear what the candidates will have to say about it. I suspect that lots of us will be watching tonight.

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline.

I sit here on this beautiful autumn day, and simply cannot believe how difficult a time I am having in getting through my work day. I am suffering a rather severe bout of paralysis by analysis.

I just now forced myself to call opposing counsel on a case – I mean, I literally screamed at myself (uh, silently, natch) to pick up the FUCKING PHONE and call the guy NOW, AND I MEAN *RIGHT NOW* GODDAMMIT!

So I did. And got his voice mail. Doh.

Dark humor of the situation aside, it is just so frustrating. I have plenty to do. In fact, I am behind on doing some of the things that I need to do. It’s like for some reason I just need to play that degree of difficulty thing. Drives me crazy.

Update as I spell-checked -- dude called me back. So one thing accomplished today -- woo-hoo!

The minor fall, the major lift.

Ye gods, the world is truly spinning weirdly lately, no? I will (at a later time) sing the song -- a dirge, sadly -- of the once-mighty Merrill Lynch a/k/a "We, The People," the firm of Charlie Merrill, the man who saw 1929 coming; the firm of Irish Catholics -- Fordham boys and Marine Corps veterans, eager to show the WASPs on the Street a thing or two; the firm who epitomized the term "wire house" and brought capitalism from Wall Street to Main Street by opening branches in towns big and small; the firm of Don Regan and his "fuck you" money; the firm of Win Smith and Don Komansky and the culture of "Mother Merrill"; and, finally and sadly, the firm of Stan O'Neal and the quarterly profit numbers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Uh, where was I? Ah, yes, weirdly spinning world. The biggest financial crisis in a long time. The political season, with the rise and fall and rise again of poll numbers -- like a high-scoring college football game, it seems like the candidate with the ball at the end will win in a squeaker. My case load, with the fierce urgency interspersed with slackness. My imaginary friend Philalawyer, and his book (Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World's Worst Profession, coming soon to used bookstores and garage sales near you) coming closer and closer to actual release. (That fucker has a book deal? It is a weirdly spinning world, indeed.)

And, so, on this Friday afternoon, I plan to skip out a bit early, and slow things down a bit. Try to restore a bit of balance to the gyrations, and find some inner calm and sense. I think that some Bushmills is called for, maybe sipped in a comfortably quiet bar filled with dark woods and polished brass. The kind of place with the Easter Proclamation on the wall and old photographs, and a friendly yet reticent bartender who will pour it neat (without waiting to be told) into a heavy rocks glass.

Who's that girl?

So, I went to go see Woody Allen's latest -- Vicky Christina Barcelona -- the other day. Now, sure, I was expecting to see a little eye candy (hello, Scarlett; hello Penelope). But I was totally not expecting to fall for the other woman. Wow. Rebecca Hall was simply amazing -- she stole the film as the endearingly confused Vicky (seen here with Javier Bardem, who was also amazing -- especially if you saw him play a very different character in No Country for Old Men).




Anyway, check it out.