Back from the road

More on that later.  In the meantime, a couple of items.

Obits?

James Burke, former head of Johnson & Johnson and the mover and shaker behind their famous tampered-Tylenol recall, died yesterday.  I can tell you, from an insider's perspective, the day Burke stepped down from hands-on management duties at J&J was a black one.  Because the next day, give or take a couple of years or so, the oily little shits who took over the corner offices started jumping one shark then another.  And a one-time wonderful company morphed into something entirely less attractive.

Cartoons?

Those of you who've followed my career closely will remember the brief time that I was regularly publishing cartoons in Oncology Times.  My favorite was two oncologists on the beach, sitting in lounge chairs under a palm tree, drinking drinks with umbrellas in them.  One says to the other:

Curious how Americans, unlike Europeans, resist fine needle aspiration of the prostate without anesthetic.

And the other one replied:

Curious indeed.

God Almighty, that was a cartoon.

And finally, the philosophical notion that life's just one big circle?

I am fully hung-ho on my Lichtenstein-esque Wall Street paintings.  The caption for the first one should read:

Before he died, Daddy told me never to sell the Bear stock.  Now I'm ruined!

Or something like that.  The only short-term snag is that I think the right size for the things is six by six, but the widest canvas I have in the studio is a bit shy of that.  I can do 5x5, and maybe will for the first one, but I think they need to be bigger.  Half the genius of Lichtenstein was the notion of blowing up to massive dimensions what would ordinarily be tiny frames in a cartoon strip.  So they need to be monumental.  Not that 6x6 is monumental, exactly, but it's a lot bigger than 5x5.

Ask them how many 6x6 paintings they own.
Why?
Because the answer, in most cases will be zero.  So it's monumental enough for the average Joe.
The average Joe can't afford them.
Then the average arbitrageur.  
Okay.  I'll ask them the next time I talk to them.
You're talking to them right now.

Okay.  How many of you, Dear Readers, particularly those of you engaged in the practice of exotic banking, have a painting that's six feet square or larger?  Submit your  answers by checking the correct box below:

O    Zero
O    One
O    Two
O    Three or more

Perhaps you should tell them that they can't actually "check" any of those boxes.  The table is simply typed and in no way interactive.
I think they'll figure that out pretty quickly without me saying anything.
It's your blog, man, but nobody wants frustrated readers.
Okay.
And those, just for the record, aren't "boxes" that they can't check.  They're circles.
Okay.  Anything else?
No.
Okay.