Notes From My Journal

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Missing Out

I’m gradually getting back into my various projects, but there was one thing I had to cancel that I regret. I was supposed to be spending this week in El Salvador, presenting, with Suzanne Snider, our book, Central American Modernism, to the key people in the city that make up the modern art world there.

I had a good time the last time we were there, about six or eight years ago, when we were researching the book. This time, we were going to be reconnecting with all the people that helped us and preparing for a second book we are doing on contemporary Central American artists. I’ve been enjoying the notes that Suzanne has been sending me on her impressions of the trip… but I’m missing out on the fun.

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Worth Watching

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À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) 

Release date (US): February 7, 1961

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

K mentioned in passing that Jean-Luc Godard had died. The following night, I watched À Bout de Souffle (Breathless), Godard’s first feature-length film.

 Breathless is a movie that every film buff is required to see. Not just see, but see many times. That’s because it was a breakthrough for French cinema after WWII. It was a departure from the way French films had been made, and it ushered in a decade of distinctly different filmmaking that became known as the New Wave.

There are several significant innovations in Breathless. One of them is that Godard shot the movie in natural light on the streets of Paris (rather than in studios). Another is that he used hand-held cameras almost throughout the entire length of the movie. Another, the most famous, perhaps, is the introduction of “jump cuts” – an odd way of cutting a scene into static pieces that force the viewer to notice that “this is a film,” as opposed to making the cuts invisible to enhance the “continuity.”

Had I not known that this is considered to be a great, revolutionary film, written and directed by one of the immortals, I might have thought it was just a low-budget, poorly made movie. But with one redeeming quality: the acting.

The story line is thin. (Godard explained his version of it to François Truffaut, who wrote the screenplay, this way: “Roughly speaking, the subject will be the story of a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn’t.”) The production is odd and disturbing. But the movie itself – the images of these two people – that stuck with me.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out and tell me if you agree.

You can watch the trailer here.

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Fun and/or Interesting

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I actually did this… I asked two of my progressively minded friends why they believed voter ID requirements discriminated against African Americans. They both gave me the same answer – the one you see in this video. I then asked two of my African American friends what they thought of what my woke friends had said. They, too, had the same reaction as the African Americans in the video.

Click here.

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Readers Write

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Emails about my surgery keep coming. (I’ll be answering as many as I possibly can personally.)

As always, I’m happy to say, I’m also getting requests for my help/advice. Like this one…

“Ever since I completed AWAI’s direct-response copywriting program, I’ve been itching to ask you something… If you were just starting out in direct-response copywriting today, what would you do to ‘make it’? I know I have writing talent, and I think I could be a good copywriter (maybe even great), but I lack guidance. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.” – CI

My Response: There are two things you can do as a student of advertising copy. After you’ve completed your AWAI coursework and feel that you have mastered the basic concepts and understand the sort of copywriting you are good at and like to do, find an entry-level job. Either as a researcher or junior writer for an established copywriter or as an employee at an advertising company or in the advertising department of a large business.

Then commit to spending two years working at least 80 hours a week on your skills. If you can’t commit to that, you should look for other work. If you commit to it but fail to keep your commitment, you’ll know that you don’t have what it takes. If you commit to it and keep your commitment, you will be ready… and the big, wide world of copywriting will be your oyster.

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Postscript

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Who is Chad Powers, and where did he learn to throw like that? 

I’ve seen lots of these. A high-level athlete disguises himself as old person and smokes mid-level athletes in a spontaneous competition. But this one is a bit different. Here, you have the high-level athlete disguising his look, and not his age, because he is one of the best-known athletes in the world.

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Friday, September 23, 2022, Delray Beach, Florida


The Economy & Investing

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Should I Build That Apartment Building?

(It’s All About Supply and Demand)

I’m back in the office today. I am determined to work diligently. With purpose, but without attachment. I sit down, close my eyes, and think good thoughts. I’m happy to be here. I’m lucky to be here.

I open my eyes. There is a pile of paper in front of me about nine inches high. Gio brings in a cup of tea. (She apparently thinks tea is better for me than coffee.) She sees the stack of paper and looks sad. “It piled up while you were in the hospital,” she says.

“No problem,” I assure her. “I’m going to do one thing at a time. I’m only going to worry about what I have to worry about today.”

She smiles. I don’t know what that means.

On the top of the stack is a report from an architect I hired to give me an estimate for converting my office space in Delray Beach to rental apartments. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been looking into doing this because, since the pandemic began, the demand for office space has been dropping, while the demand for rental space has surged.

In South Florida, for example, rental prices are crazy high. A modest two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood in Broward County will cost you at least $2,300. In Miami, the same apartment could be another $1,000.

And it’s not just Florida. Rental prices are high in most major cities along both coasts, spurring a surge of apartment building construction. In Delray Beach, there must be at least two dozen going up. Six of them are within a half-mile of where I’m thinking of building mine.

What This Means: The real estate market is cyclical, and prices adjust cyclically. But if you are in the business of buying and selling, or even buying and renting, existing properties, there are relatively safe ways to make sure you don’t get in trouble. (I’ve written about this many times.)

When you get into the supply side of the cycle (by building rental units), however, you take on an extra level of risk – the volatility that can occur during the two or three years it typically takes to build an apartment building of any size.

Right now, there is a strong demand for rental units. And it’s going to continue to be strong for – my guess – another two to three years. I don’t see this additional demand being negatively affected by recession. It could be stimulated. But the ability of renters to pay more than they are paying now, or even as much… that may disappear.

The Bottom Line: Demand is strong And supply is limited, but it is filling up fast. For me, this means my window of opportunity will close soon. I’m going to have to get started or sit back and wait for the next opportunity to build.

I don’t want to get myself crazy about this. I’m not going to send out a flurry of emails, trying to push this project forward. I make friends with the enemy: my fear of missing out on this opportunity to develop a big, profitable residential building. I imagine the opportunity flying away. I see my life going on happily without it.

I will act purposefully, but without attachment. I’ll send out one text to the architect, asking for answers to any questions I have after reading his report. But I won’t worry about it.

Learn more about the rental market here.

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Arts & Letters

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Fine Art and the Great Wealth Transfer

I can’t remember where I read it, but over the next two decades something like $70 trillion will be passed down from America’s Baby Boomers to their kids and grandkids. About $40 trillion of that will go to the top 2% of households. That group, the upper 2%, is basically the fine art market. And that should be good news for brokers and dealers and associated professionals that make their living in the art world.

But there’s a problem. It turns out that many of the Boomers’ children aren’t all that fond of their parents’ art. And so, when they inherit it, they will probably sell it. The Boomers don’t like that idea – that their kids would sell their treasured collections just to put a few extra millions in their pockets. So they are changing their wills and putting their art into museums and other non-profit institutions for a write-off on their taxes.

For details on this story (from Art News), click here.

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Worth Reading

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Men Without Women 

By Ernest Hemingway

128 pages

First published in 1927

Men Without Women is Hemingway’s second short story collection. There are 14 stories in all. Most are short and sparse, more journal entries than fully developed stories. But four of them – The Killers, Fifty Grand, Hills Like White Elephants, and In Another Country – are complete and very good.

I read it while I was in the hospital last week, nodding in and out of consciousness. It was a literary balm to soothe my ontological anxiety.

Critical Response 

* Ray Long, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, said that Fifty Grand was “one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands… the best prize-fight story I ever read… a remarkable piece of realism.”

* Percy Hutchinson, in the New York Times Book Review, praised the collection for “language sheered to the bone, colloquial language expended with the utmost frugality; but it is continuous and the effect is one of continuously gathering power.”

* Joseph Wood Krutch called the stories in Men Without Women “Sordid little catastrophes” involving “very vulgar people.”

Interesting 

Hemingway responded to the less favorable reviews with a poem published in The Little Review in May 1929:

Valentine 

(For a Mr. Lee Wilson Dodd and Any of His Friends Who Want It)

Sing a song of critics
pockets full of lye
four and twenty critics
hope that you will die
hope that you will peter out
hope that you will fail
so they can be the first one
be the first to hail
any happy weakening or sign of quick decay.
(All very much alike, weariness too great,
sordid small catastrophes, stack the cards on fate,
very vulgar people, annals of the callous,
dope fiends, soldiers, prostitutes,
men without a callus)

Hemingway’s style, on the other hand, received much acclaim. Even Krutch, writing in the Nation in 1927, said, “Men Without Women appears to be the most meticulously literal reporting and yet it reproduces dullness without being dull.”

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Fun and/or Interesting

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This Week’s Must-Be-Fake News 

New York is going to place convicted pot dealers at the front of the legal pot business line. According to the NYT, the state has set up a $200 million fund from which licensees will take out loans to start their cannabis stores. And the first 150 licenses will go to the enterprising criminals.

Chris Alexander, Executive Director of the New York State Office of Cannabis Management, did not explain how getting arrested for selling pot qualifies someone to run a pot-selling business. So, it will be interesting to see if this works. California instituted a similar program in 2019. It failed because the new entrepreneurs were unable to keep their businesses profitable. They ended up selling out to the big companies that run California’s legal pot businesses now.

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