I'm baaaack.

Sam: What'll you have Normie?
Norm: Well, I'm in a gambling mood Sammy. I'll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap.
Sam: Looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.

I'm back and I'm bringing all my Flip It, my Revolutionomics, my blood in the streets approach and everything I've been missing with me.

I'm still not sure how I ended up hosting a TV show...a TV show from the Waldorf Astoria's Bull & Bear bar at that.  It was a very cool job, that whole TV host thing I just did.  I met a lot of really famous, rich and/or powerful people, many of whom were very sincere in their work and causes, some of whom were awe-inspiring and a few who gave me the creeps.  Yeah, it was a real rush, but as many a commenter and more than one critic noted, my viewpoints, my look and my approach might not have really fit in too well all the time over at the company.  I suppose I'll just leave it at that.

Anyway, when they canceled Happy Hour, I asked them to let me go even though I still have a lot of friends over at the Dow Jones-owned Fox News and FBN and even at the main Fox network and plan to continue working with them at times.

But I wanted to get out.  Unshackle myself for a while. Call it faith, call it confidence, call it hubris, call it stupidity -- but I figure there's some more beer in my career taps.  Hell, I sorta feel like a free agent (not quite King James, of course), and the last three weeks have been a wild whirlwind.  Some of the things I'm working on and/or looking at range from working with a team to finish up a business plan for a venture I'm working on with Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead (I'll be posting a couple videos of us jamming at his place in coming days on http://TheCodyBlog.com) to fielding some TV ideas that have come my way too.  Yeah, more TV, sigh.  "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"  (You can't ever go wrong quoting The Godfather, you know - just ask Stevie Van zandt):

I'd like to say I'm headed to the movies, but that Chavista-apologist director Oliver Stone wrote me and all of FBN out of Wall Street 2.  Surely that happening had nothing to do with capitalism, right?  I've been spending a lot of time in Hollywood lately...maybe I should make the move!  Ha. I will crank out a book finally and am also joining the speech-giving circuit.

My companies have got a few other Internet-content/media businesses (our latest venture...think App News & Reviews) that I've been working on behind the scenes that are starting to get going (we need some help -- if you're willing to do some high-profile work for free at first to get your foot in the door and prove yourself to us, send your resume to [email protected]).

I've also been working with James Altucher on a new fund/investment vehicle under his Formula Capital umbrella that we're expecting to launch on October 1 (exactly eight years to the day since I last launched a fund).  Investing, running money, finding another Apple or two to ride from $7 to $160 like I did before I took the TV job full-time and closed my old fund is probably what I'm really jonesing about.  It feels like what I'm meant to do in many ways.

At any rate, you can still find me writing as much as ever here on my blogs (http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody if you want to read only my business/political/investment blogs OR at http://TheCodyBlog.com if you want to read everything I write).  You can also follow me on http://twitter.com/codywillard or find me on facebook.

"What are you trying to prove, what does it prove?"

CodyWillard.com Moves to Fox (or, Am I Just Another Sell Out?)

People tell us that we play too loud
But they don't know what our music's about
We never listen to the record company man
They try to change us and ruin our band.

That's why we don't wanna be good
That's why we don't wanna be good
We're prisoners of rock and roll.

When were jammin' in our old garage
The girls come over and it sure gets hot
We don't wanna be watered down
Takin' orders from record company clowns.

That's why we don't wanna be good
That's why we don't wanna be good
We're prisoners of rock and roll.

We're prisoners of rock and roll. - Neil Young

CodyWillard.com is, alas, becoming cody.blogs.foxbusiness.com.

Am I just a classic sell out at this point? I have to wonder exactly that if I can flatter myself for a minute, don’t I, as the move is made…

The whole of my blog, starting with TheCodyBlog.com or even the original TelEconomist.com days, is something which frankly I’ve come to associate my self-identity with, at least in some part. And it is now fully engulfed by a mainstream media outlet… The Man. Hmm.At any rate, rest assured that there will be absolutely no change in the the thrust of the content and what I write and say around here. I'll not pull any punches -- none that I'd not pull on my own anyway at least, you know. I'll still write in exactly the same voice, calling it exactly as I see it, Flipping It as best as I can (though I suppose being as fully part of a mainstream media company, a giant conglomerate makes my trying to Flip It [Flipping It - a term I've trademarked and defined as doing or thinking exactly opposite conventional wisdom] a bit more challenging by definition, doesn't it?) and basically being exactly who I've always been as best as I can.

I’ll post lots of stock, economic, and societal analysis and commentary, lots of music, personal stories and home videos and photologs and whatever else I want, whenever I want, however I want...as long as the technology's supported and all that, which, come to think of it, means one change to the blog will be that I won't be able to embed videos any more until FoxBusiness.com chooses to greenlight that ability. Sigh, the control starts even as I say it won't, doesn't it?

Well, at least they can't stop me from writing that the control starts, can they?

We're Prisoners of Rock n Roll, but let's keep on rockin' in the free world, eh?

Yes, ironically, you'll have to click on the link below since I can't embed the video since I've sold out and now don't have the control I did if you want to scream with the Godfather of Grunge himself.

All that said, as far as my media career is concerned, you guys do realize I started off with a telecom stock website called TelEconomist.com and got a break from Jim Cramer and TheStreet.com by responding to one of his columns back in 2000 and now, yes, my blog is moving to Fox? I am pretty proud of that too, you see!

See you on the other side then.

Resurrections, Flashbacks and Perspective

Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.  -  Ecclesiasticus (ch. IX, v. 10)

My mom used to tell me all the time that one of my best talents is surrounding myself with good people.  I look at my career today, the people I work with and more importantly who mentor me, and I'm proud to say that's probably still true.  In my personal life too, I'm proud of who I call "friends", as they all inspire me to try to be a good person, to work hard and ethically.  Most of my friends are married and/or family men, and most of them push me to do right by the ladies, which I, for all my whining and reflective thinking on these pages, have certainly not always  been good at.

I think this good-people cloud used to also be true about the women I dated too.   My high school sweetheart, my college sweetheart, my first girlfriend in NYC...I'm still friends with all of them, even as I haven't talked so some of them in a long while.  The time, as the saying goes, had slipped away and for years I hadn't talked to my first NYC gf - let's call her Boroughpark Girl because that's where we'd lived together in Brooklyn almost a decade ago.  I called her today to say Happy Easter and she answered the phone saying she'd been missing me and was glad I called and so we even grabbed a dinner.

I remember hearing my parents listening to some preacher as a kid and the preacher talking about how a scent or a song or a sound can flash you back to a certain time and place and how important it is to key into those times to keep perspective. Or something like that.  I love that flashback thing to this day -- when an old song from Chicago comes on the radio and you remember learning to kiss with Drina Teliapani (darn near her true name, and I mean,  Hollywood couldn't have come up with a better name than that for the "hot" girl who moves to town in sixth grade now that I think back on it...Italian last name too, no?  And here I thought this Italian-fascination thing of mine of late was a new thing), when the old exposed earth is so hot you smell it in the heat as the subway blows into the station in certain stations in NYC and you remember pulling the water well out at the farm in San Patricio...

And seeing Boroughpark Girl tonight felt a little bit flash-back-ish.   It reminded me of where I used to live and work, what I was up to back not so long ago - struggling to pay rent, much less break through on Wall Street, but dreaming big.  An immigrant who practically raised herself in a slum of Brooklyn, she's been working her butt off since she graduated Brooklyn College at a non-profit for sick kids, and talking to her about old times reminded me of the hours I'd spent overnight building my old TelEconomist.com website and brand even as I was helping build several companies at work too.

I wrote in some lyrics and used to use as a slogan on occasion on this blog, "I've already paid my dues, but my pay ain't due."   Old friends, especially ones you haven't seen in a long time, because they know from whence you came like new friends just can't, are good for highlighting just how much you've been paid. And it's a lot, and I'm thankful for how far I've come, even as I know I have much further yet to go.

Glad too, that I think my friends are good people, because I know many of my ex's and colleagues don't think that about their friends.  What's up with that, btw?

What Would Grandma Susie Do?

The other night I'm at a charity event with a friend. After the event, we're in a car service headed downtown for drinks. She's got two Blackberries (Blackberrys?) out and is tapping away. After a couple minutes, I ask who's she's texting. She names a hook up friend of hers, and adds that she'd just texted her parents too. I feel the Negativity well up inside of me and I sit there putting it out towards her.

She senses it of course, even as she's still texting and asks me what's up.

I tell her that you get from the universe what you put out into it. (Yeah, I really said that. Sigh.) And now I can tell I've upset her too. She presses about it, but I quickly drop it and we move on and actually continue to have a nice non-romantic, friendly night out.

I wonder sometimes what our grandparents would think of our standards of social norms. I'm starting a weekly series on this blog this summer that'll be called Mind Your Digital Manners (or something like that) that'll be an Emily Post series for the always-connected world we live in (I'll answer how many good byes does it take to end an IM conversation...how quickly you have to answer text messages from ex-colleagues and ex-lovers on the weekend, etc).

The fact is, it's rude to text anybody when you're out in a one-on-one setting with a friend (squeeze in a quick text in the bathroom if you must, but better to just be out and living the night, frankly).

But you know, my reaction wasn't proportional to the social infraction. No, I knew at the time and know now that the greater part of my Negativity was the echoes of my recent trashing and the lies that surrounded it, even as it seems to me most of my friends think I shouldn't be bothered by any of it. I've got some bitterness about it -- anger is probably a more accurate description at present -- and that came out as my friend texted her lover.

I'd add that what really sucks is that there's nothing I can do about it just now, but to let it process. Again. I wish I could ask Grandma Susie, from whose Emily Post book we used to read at our dinner table, what she thinks of dating and hanging in NYC in 2008.

Groundhog Day Personal Life

Rita: [Phil has described several people in the diner] What about me, Phil? Do you know me too?
Phil: I know all about you. You like producing, but you hope for more than Channel 9 Pittsburgh.
Rita: Well, everyone knows that!
Phil: You like boats, but not the ocean. You go to a lake in the summer with your family up in the mountains. There's a long wooden dock and a boathouse with boards missing from the roof, and a place you used to crawl underneath to be alone. You're a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You're very generous. You're kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel.
Rita: [ in wonder] How are you doing this?
Phil: I told you. I wake up every day, right here, right in Punxsutawney, and it's always February 2nd, and there's nothing I can do about it. -- Groundhog Day, the movie

A month ago or so, I wrote in a song about this most most recent break up:

"And why's there's always so much pain and and so much at risk between us?
The reward's gotta be big. The payout of our love."

That last line got stuck in my head and a couple days ago, it occurred why -- I'd written a similar line in my college journal. So I pulled it out and flipped through to find it:

"I'm hiding from the sun in the shadow of our goodbye
I want it dark
Cringing in pain and empty laughter
Bring me my pain happily ever after."

And I remember that I was bumming about my high school sweet heart when I'd written that. We'd been just about to start our first year together at college, at UNM...but after years of being together, we'd Ended Relationship just a couple weeks into our being at school together. It still took a year of every-once-in-a-while getting back together to really seal the End of Relationship deal with her.

Hell, five years later she'd moved to the Lower East Side to NYC for a couple years, and we hung out in NYC sometimes, though always just as friends.

And see, I'm flipping through this journal from college and, man, don't a lot of these lyrics in here sound a lot like the lyrics that I've been writing about my personal life lately about not wanting to lose myself or fool myself into false happiness or security in a relationship and then the pain of almost finding love and but not quite getting there and then having a hard time breaking up and beating myself up the whole way through for all of it?

And, yes, as a matter of fact, they do sound a lot alike. And that's because there's a lot of parallels between what I'd write about back then and what I write about today.

After my high school sweet heart and I broke up, I'd gotten even more serious about basketball than I had been (which had already entailed years of living in the gym full of big D1 dreams). And I focused on little else but my goals. My Goals.
Every once in a while, I'd get serious with one girl only to quickly realize I'd made a terrible mistake, and I'd feel terrible that those wouldn't work out right. I'd sometimes date around for a while and then end up in a relationship with a beautiful, smart woman. But we wouldn't right for each other and we'd both sorta know that from the beginning anyway. And we'd End the Relationship pretty well on the first shot when the time would be right.

But mostly I was focused on Making It In Basketball. And in my journal, I'd lament the heartbreak of my Lost Love and all the ways she'd hurt me and how sad I was that we hadn't worked out.

And here I am today, focused on my goals. My Goals. Is it a coincidence that I'm writing so much again for the first time in months, having gotten started again just after getting trashed by this now newfound Lost Love? Do I thrive on the heartbreak? And if so, does that mean I've created this long-term recurring cycle of continual heatbreak and lamenting the Lost Love and all the pain they cause me and I keep playing it out. In real time. Over and over.

Dating in NYC 2008: Predictable Anarchy

What's up with the lies? Don't get me wrong, I'm no saint, you know? But there's something about these women I've dated lately and this incessant need to create a facade from the beginning.

There was the vegan health nut who drank too much, who after checking her gmail at my house on a Saturday had left the window open. She canceled meeting me to see a friend sing at church the next morning because she was sick. So as I sit at my computer early that morning to read my own emails, the first one says something about how it was nice to meet me at Kane last night, and I'm thinking to myself - 1. I've never heard of, much less been to Kane. 2. I was in bed last night by midnight, wasn't I? 3. Oh, this isn't addressed to me...log out.

Later that night, when she called and began explaining her so-called ailments again and how bummed she was she'd miss the Mass, I called her out. I didn't frankly care that she'd been out partying and what not -- I hardly knew her, you know? -- but what am I supposed to do with her wanting me to think it wasn't partying, but simple sickness that'd been the hold up? This, of course, came after I'd met her out at a restaurant of her friend's and she'd told me how she'd made out with maitre-de before. I hadn't asked. Upon call out, btw, she ended up coming clean and wanting to wipe the slate clean and all that. But again, what am I supposed to do that kind of a start?

It took us a long time after that to finally end it -- I have all the unwanted expertise in slow motion breaking up you'd ever wish on your worst enemy. I hate the End of Relationship, even those that get started badly. I seem to do the end of relationship thing instead.

Cheating's even worse than the "I'm hoping you'll think I'm someone I'm not" kind of start, of course. That's what'd happened when I'd tried to rekindle this long lost love of mine that readers heard about a long time ago. You get started into that relationship, and you're being honest and thinking maybe you could try to build something out of this one. She was too this time around, eventually, but before she got there, the slip-back to the ex had crept in.

Gotta give her credit for breaking up with me after, before getting back together with me "for real" and admitting the cheat on her own. Follow that? Me neither, but some of my friends say they do.

See, and that last paragraph really underscores what sucks so bad about dating in NYC in 2008. It's basically anarchy out there, with people getting together, lying about getting together, switching get togethers, admitting get togethers (at least some of them and most of what happened at them) and so on, but we each have our own rules, ethics, and morals.

But it's anarchy out there!

Actually, anarchy's not the right term, is it? There's clear patterns to the anarchy out there, which means it's not really anarchy at all.

And is there anything worse than knowing early on in a relationship how the relationship's going to end...and then letting it play out? Anarchy's not predictable by definition, but so much of this scene is utterly predictable -- it's just the details that differ, I suppose.

Run Fast, Dream Big

When I was 25 and working at Oppenheimer, my first job on Wall Street, I saw an article about a Reebok 4-minute mile challenge. That is, if you were an amateur athlete and could break a four-minute mile, Reebok would give you a million bucks. Or maybe it was $100,000, whatever.

I used to work out hours a day, every day and since I'd ended my streak of playing hoops every single day for more than a decade right before I'd moved to NYC the year before, I needed a new goal. So I started working on running a four minute mile. I was in the upper 5 minute range -- couldn't remember the last time I'd tried to run a mile for time.

A couple months later and the challenge was a week away...and I'd gotten my time down to about 4:30 or so. That last 30 seconds was gonna be tough.

I didn't make it. And I got a promotion about that same time and I haven't been quite the same obsessive athlete I used to be since.

The reason I bring all this up. How exciting is this kid's story? Imagine if he makes the Olympics out of the blue like this.

Even if he doesn't, you have to admire the kid for following his dreams.

Great Set of Wheels for Olympic Hopeful

By LYNN ZINSER

Sprinter Dallas Robinson, 6 feet 4 inches and 210 pounds, is turning heads with some of the world’s fastest times, despite his limited training and tremendous size.

Dream big, man, dream big.

Cody Jams on Friday: Clapton and Winwood at MSG

I often say that it's no longer about who you know, but what you know. The fact is that "who" you know does matter, but my point is that in this digital age when you can reach out and communicate with just about anyone if you're diligent enough, that "what" you know matters more to "who" you know than "who" you know matters to your success, however you may define it.

At any rate, as a result of diligently writing thousands of posts and articles for TheStreet.com, I ended up friends with Mitch Rose, rock n roll agent to the stars at CAA. Mitch was in town for Eric Clapton's concerts with Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden this week.
And did he ever hook me up last night. After a fascinating discussion on how the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame works with the president of the RnR HoF himself, Joel Peresman, and a challenging discussion on the impact that the Internet will have on all forms of content (video, audio and text) at McCormick & Schmidt's, we headed down the concert, entering through the back of MSG and taking an elevator straight to the amazing seats we had just feet from the stage.

And what a show. Eric was amazing. So effortless. You'd watch and sorta forget how amazing the technical and melodic sounds he's making are, and then at times you'd have this flash of, "Holy moly...that sequence just floated by, then ripped through, before it collapsed in my head."

The first half of the show was steady and fun...it was after they'd warmed up for an hour or so that the show really kicked it up a gear.

Clapton's acoustic version of Eric Johnson's "Ramblin' on My Mind" took the original and somehow modernized for the crowd despite being so true to the original.

I often wonder what Mozart would think of Eric Johnson's work. Or what Beethoven would think of the Beatles for that matter.

And Winwood's solo take on "Georgia" settled us down into a zen-like zone right before they kicked up the last part of the concert with Clapton and Hendrix originals.

Little Wing. Oh man, that was awesome.

One of the best concerts I've ever been to. A beautiful night, really. I'd be remiss not to add that even as I'm not a star-struck kinda-guy, and I wouldn't trade the night as it went for anything (you never want to look back, anyway, right?), my date and I did split off from Mitch and Brooks from SportsByBrooks.com once at the concert and they eventually headed backstage and hit the after parties afterward. Fact is, I know I'm gonna hear about sacrificing meeting Slowhand. But I gotta be me.

A Trade In Which Emotions Aren’t the Enemy

I made the joke the other day with some of my colleagues that I'd become emotionally bankrupt. I was exaggerating, but man, I'd hit an emotional low a few weeks ago. I'd also made the joke that I wished I could buy calls on my emotional state, because it was certainly at a sentimental low.

Nothing like catching your breath again, and were I now long those options, I'd probably peel a few of them off now to catch my breath and still keep plenty of exposure to the upside. Wouldn't it be great to trade options on your own emotions? You could roll your emotional call options up when they're close to expiring but you know you've got momentum. And when things in your personal life are going awful, you could either load up on puts if you're the greedy type or at least hedge yourself for the downside.

I'm surprised that in this Web 2.3 bubble (ooh, great new term for this phase of the net...we're not hardly past 2.0 and certainly not at 3.0, but we're moving...) that I've not seen the pitch from some PR firm for some Stanford grad's social network full of options trading, real or paper, on your own emotions yet.

Or at least some pitch from some kid on his couch in his living room with a model and site up in beta.

All of which begs the question if you could then be sued for insider trading, I suppose.

And with that, I'll get my Judge Judy fix and head onto bed.

Resentment, Anger, Fists and Bagel Dogs

August 1995 and I came back to the apartment I shared with my UNM basketball teammate, friend, all-WAC first teamer, Marlow White, because I'd forgotten my company cell phone, one of of those big black brick Motorola ones that were the first "handheld" back in the early 1990s. Across the sidewalk lived my teammate, friend, first round draft choice of the Miami Heat, Charles Smith, and a kid who'd sat out that year for something or another.

To be clear at the onset, I was resentful of all of them (not to mention my girl friend at the time who was on scholarship with volleyball team, if I'm to be perfectly honest with myself frankly) for being on scholarship and being from out of state but being able to live rent-free with a per diem on scholarship while I was working 50 hours a week saving up money for school and rent working at a civil engineering firm.

I'd come home as I was wont to do and had bagel dogs with Ranch Style beans, a banana and celery and watched bad talk show TV for lunch. Marlow was coming in to pick up some books or something as I headed out not realizing I'd forgotten that brick.

When I came back, it wasn't in the apartment. I was running very late to get back to the office now, and so I figured I'd just find it later. Ah, but as I headed back out the door, I saw through the glass doors across the sidewalk that our sat-year-out friend was chatting away on my company phone sitting on his lazy boy. He saw me as I stormed towards the door and he hung it up, waving with a hopeful grin on his face. I came in grabbed the brick from his hand and asked him what the hell he was thinking.

"Relax," he told me, cool as ice, given he had five inches and thirty pounds on me, "It's just your company phone. It don't cost you nothing. I just used it to call my aunt in Dallas."

Of course my company checked the records like a hawk given that the charge per minute for local calls were like 10 cents a minute and long distance was on top of that. I'd never made a long distance call on the thing. And told him all of this.

He got defensive and came back with a "don't whine" kind of comment.

I was really late for work at this point and turned to the door, saying, "Man, you'll never steal anything from me again. Seriously."

"Or what?"

I turned back, foolishly like a kid who's resentful and now angered by his team-mate who has that scholarship and guaranteed chance on the team and who just caused him some serious problems at work and is now talking trash, and said, "You'll never steal from me again. Seriously."

He lunged at me and slammed me to the ground, throwing punches to the side of my head with his left fist (he'd always been easy to cover because he so favored his left so). I used the force of the landing to free myself from him and jump back up. He tackled me again and as we both threw punches back and forth as we wrestled on that horribly stiff carpet as Marlow and Charles came back in and broke us up.

I changed shirts and headed straight into the office where they were waiting for me to pick up a package to take to a downtown client. That drive in was a trip -- the adrenaline was still flowing and things moving in slow motion as they do when you've been pushed to the fundamentals of violence like that. My boss, a pretty 30-something divorcee who was very nice but didn't like her job because she didn't have a clear career path, saw me as I tried to sneak in and grab the package and head right back out. She could clearly see that I'd been in a tumble of some sort, as my eye was scratched and puffy.

I told her what had happened, and of course she felt horrible for me and was very nice and even sent me home early with pay before the day was over.

Tensions ran pretty high around the duplex after that, as you can imagine. The summer ended just a couple weeks later and me and UNM Coach, Dave Bliss parted ways...which only increased my resentment of course. I still can't bring myself to watch college basketball. And when I look back at that fight, which I do believe is my last one, though I did get suckerpunched a year later in the gym getting stitches in the lip and everything, I wonder about this quote from Yoda:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

What is it I feared that day, that summer? Resentment and then theft leads to anger too. That doesn't sound quite wise enough for Yoda though, does it? And really, I have to say, there wasn't that much suffering out of that fight either, though neither of us looked or felt better.

And, yes, I lost the fight.

PS.  I feel rusty, writing.