#david sokol

[seeking--the--essential]

[esperwatchesfilms]

The VelociPastor (2018)

This one holds an especially special place in my heart. I’m always proud of classmates and teachers and other folks from my hometown who go on to do amazing things. I knew he was a force to be reckoned with when he played Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. in our high school production of Little Shop of Horrors, and I’m so glad to see his talent and determination produced this fucking gem. Yes, I did just shamelessly brag about having been acquainted with the writer/director/producer/editor in high school. But in all honesty, I’m extremely happy to have known him and to be able to include this absolute MASTERPIECE in my world record attempt.

Father Stewart: So your parents died, Doug. It's what parents do. They die on you.

I love that Doug tells the homeless man he took a vow of poverty and then runs off, no change to give the downtrodden. Then Carol comes by, telling Doug off for being inconsiderate as he runs into her and then she digs some coins out of her purse to hand to the homeless man. I can only speculate, but that definitely feels like some pointed commentary. I love it.

Frankie Mermaid: Now, what’s my name? Carol: Frankie Mermaid. Frankie Mermaid: And why is my name Frankie Mermaid? [Carol mumbles] Frankie Mermaid: Speak up girl, or else I’m gonna give you the fucking boot! Carol: [raises voice] ‘Cause you’re swimmin’ in bitches! Frankie Mermaid: You’re goddamn right!

Frankie Mermaid: Yo, Cherry! If you stuffed dicks in your mouth like you’re doing that sandwich, I’d be a fucking millionaire by now!

Doug Jones: I don't believe you. Dinosaurs never existed, and even if they did, I don't transform into one.

Doug Jones: You're a hooker? Carol: And premed/law, but people aren't surprised as much by that one.

Carol: You think I like turning tricks to pay for college? There’s surprisingly little demand for hooker-doctor-lawyers.

Doug Jones: What is it that you'd like to confess? Frankie Mermaid: Oh, geez, I guess we could cover the last... four days? Stole candy from this baby, then I threw the baby in the river - so it couldn't snitch, obviously - then, ah, well, I pimp bitches; I do drugs, sell drugs, murder people - really, you name it, I've done it, padre.

Carol: I don’t know much about God...

Doug Jones: Father Stewart, what if I told you that I was different? Father Stewart: You're not that different. There are plenty of men like that in the church.

Doug Jones: I might be on a mission from God himself! Father Stewart: That's insane, Doug! God does not want people dead! Doug Jones: Oh, I think God wants a lot of people dead.

Father Stewart: War is war, and war is hell, and hell never changes.

HOW DIDN’T I NOTICE THAT ALTAIR IS PLAYED BY MUSICIAN VOLTAIRE!? I LISTENED TO SO MUCH OF HIS MUSIC AS A TEENAGER!!! WTF!?!?!?! THIS IS CURRENTLY MY NEW FAVORITE THING ABOUT THIS FILM!!! How am I this stupid? How did I not notice this sooner!? I’m a dum-dum. Oh my gods, that makes this movie a thousand times more perfect.

Oh my god... another sort of subtle joke that I’m not sure whether or not it was intentional (It fucking has to be... it just has to) -- there is a ninja called Choi-Min who doesn’t say a word except in a voiceover while he’s ignoring a ninja who’s talking strategy. The ninja talking strategy has Australian accent. When he says “Choi-Min” it sounds like he’s saying “Chime in”, making the name Choi-Min super punny... and I know that’s a small thing, but it made me ridiculously happy that I noticed another thing I hadn’t noticed in this film before.

Doug Jones: Your ancestors are my ancestors!

I love that Carol was dying, but she ends up in a general doctor’s office-looking place rather than a hospital. It cracks me up more than it’s probably meant to.

ESE: 98/100

50 +5 for “Rated X by an all-christian jury” -10 for blowing up Doug’s parents +10 for VFX: Car on fire +10 for the “what parents do” line +5 for the subtle Jurassic Park riff at the end of the opening credits -5 for China looking a lot like the woods behind my house +3 for mannequin head +5 for hooker-doctor-lawyers +5 for Frankie Mermaid’s confession +2 for the high-five +5 for prolonged goofy ninja laughter -5 for Vietnam also looking a lot like the woods behind my house -5 for Ali’s death +7 for Ali continuing to puff on his cigarette after death -5 for poor, sweet Adeline’s demise +5 for Altair -5 for ripping out Father Stewart’s eye +8 for the way the sex scene is edited +5 for kicking ass in their undies -5 for stabbing Father Stewart +5 for prolonged ninja laughter again -5 for neglecting poor Sam -5 for cutting Carol +5 for the ninjas crying for Carol +10 for hilarious AF dino costume +3 for re-use of the mannequin head -5 for smoking in a hospital +5 for the Chevelle

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

The fullest accounting yet shows how Thomas has secretly reaped the benefits from a network of wealthy and well-connected patrons that is fa

Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski at ProPublica:

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood. Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast. This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount. While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts. Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

This year, ProPublica revealed Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow’s generosity toward Thomas, including vacations, private jet flights, gifts, the purchase of his mother’s house in Georgia and tuition payments. In an April statement, the justice defended his relationship with Crow. The Crows “are among our dearest friends,” Thomas said. “As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips.” The New York Times recently surfaced VIP treatment from wealthy businessmen he met through the Horatio Alger Association, an exclusive nonprofit. Among them were David Sokol, a former top executive at Berkshire Hathaway, and H. Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who turned Blockbuster and Waste Management into national goliaths. (The Times noted Thomas gives access to the Supreme Court building for Horatio Alger events; ProPublica confirmed that the access has cost $1,500 or more in donations per person.) Records and interviews show Thomas had another benefactor, oil baron Paul “Tony” Novelly, whose gifts to the justice have not previously been reported. ProPublica’s totals in this article include trips from Crow.

Each of these men — Novelly, Huizenga, Sokol and Crow — appears to have first met Thomas after he ascended to the Supreme Court. With the exception of Crow, their names are nowhere in Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required by law to publicly report most gifts. The total value of the undisclosed trips they’ve given Thomas since 1991, the year he was appointed to the Supreme Court, is difficult to measure. But it’s likely in the millions. Huizenga sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to John Wener, a former flight attendant and chef on board the plane. If he were picked up in D.C., the five-hour round trip would have cost at least $130,000 each time had Thomas chartered the jet himself, according to estimates from jet charter companies. In February 2016, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Washington to New Haven, Connecticut, before heading back on the jet just three hours later. ProPublica previously reported the flight, but newly obtained U.S. Marshals Service records reveal its purpose: Thomas met with several Yale Law School deans for a tour of the room where they planned to display a portrait of the justice. (Crow’s foundation also gave the school $105,000, earmarked for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.)

Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others. Fox, who worked under both Democrat and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. “You don’t get to acquire any new ones,” he told them. Thomas and Novelly did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. Huizenga died in 2018 and his son, who is the president of the family’s holding company, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a statement to ProPublica, Sokol said he’s been close friends with the Thomases for 21 years and acknowledged traveling with and occasionally hosting them. He defended the justice as upright and ethical. “We have never once discussed any pending court matter,” Sokol said. “Our conversations have always revolved around helping young people, sports, and family matters.” “As to the use of private aviation,” he added, “I believe that given security concerns all of the Supreme Court justices should either fly privately or on governmental aircraft.” The justices have said they follow court rules prohibiting them from accepting gifts from a group of people so frequently that “a reasonable person would believe that the public office is being used for private gain.” But what actually constitutes a gift under those rules is ambiguous and, in practice, justices have few restrictions on what they can accept. Other members of the court have accepted travel underwritten by wealthy businessmen and speaking invitations at universities. Stephen Breyer accepted a flight to a Nantucket wedding from a Democratic megadonor. Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a tour of Israel and Jordan paid for by an Israeli billionaire. Those gifts are public because Breyer and Ginsburg disclosed them.

Thomas, however, is apparently an extreme outlier for the volume and frequency of all the undisclosed vacations he’s received. He once complained that he sacrificed wealth to sit on the court, though he depicted the choice as a matter of conscience. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” he told the bar association in Savannah, Georgia, in 2001, “but it is worth doing for the principle.” To track Thomas’ relationships and travel, ProPublica examined flight data, emails from airport and university officials, security detail records, tax court filings, meeting minutes and a trove of photographs from personal albums, including cards that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, sent to friends. In addition, reporters interviewed more than 100 eyewitnesses and other sources: jet and helicopter pilots, flight attendants, airport workers, yacht crew members, security guards, photographers, waitresses, caterers, chefs, drivers, river rafting guides and C-suite executives.

ProPublica has not identified any legal cases that Huizenga, Sokol or Novelly had at the Supreme Court during their documented relationships with Thomas, although they all work in industries significantly impacted by the court’s decisions. In a small-circulation biography given to Huizenga’s friends and family, Thomas acknowledged that he and Huizenga discussed some of the billionaire’s companies but said their relationship was never transactional. “It wasn’t that kind of friendship,” he told the interviewer. The justice said they’d prefer to go to a small restaurant in a strip mall or sit on the billionaire’s lawn and drink tea or diet soda. “We are in a society where everything is quid pro quo,” Thomas said, but not with the Huizengas. “I don’t do anything for them and they can’t do anything for me.”

ProPublica has yet another hard-hitting exposé on the ethics-challenged SCOTUS "Justice" Clarence Thomas, this time his 38 vacations paid by multiple billionaires.

Read the full story at ProPublica.

[anotherselfportrait]

Another Self Portrait takes us back to the turbulent years of the first Nixon administration, shortly after Woodstock. All these years later, this now feels like the musical escape many searched for in those dark days

David Sokol in Stereophile

[huckbald]

"Suddenly Simple Authentic, organic and local isn't just about your food—American minimalist furnishings with clean shapes and forthright finishes are all the rage" in @wsj

By DAVID SOKOL

The New American Minimalism

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The Lawson table, designed and made in Brooklyn by Egg Collective, $4,850 .

IT'S A PHENOMENON AS OLD as America itself—our taste in furniture, as in fashion, is fickle. In the early 19th century, the winged pedestals of English Regency were brushed aside for the sleeker lines of Grecian Plain. Our suburban forefathers moved Danish modern into the attic and trucked in lumbering Spanish revival. And today we're putting our playful blob lamps on eBay and returning to simple, locally made pieces.

Call it the New American Minimalism. It usurps our 2000s-era romance with confections perhaps best represented by the Dutch brand Moooi, which conjured up crocheted side tables and Louis-style chairs burned to a slight crisp. It also bears little resemblance to older minimalist vocabularies, like the colorful Memphis style that was parodied in the 1988 movie "Beetlejuice." Instead, honesty is now the policy: reserved shapes, natural materials, apparent construction and hand finishing.

Consider the Maxhedron chandelier by Bec Brittain, a prism of one-way mirrors mounted into a steel armature. Or maybe the Wave Bench by Seattle's Henrybuilt Furniture, with gentle curves and the occasional game board routed into a wood slab that also boasts visible mortise-and-tenon joinery. Such thoughtfully detailed forms "encourage the consumer to care for the people making it for them," said designer Lindsey Adelman, who is based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Michael Garten

OF THE ESSENCE | Rich Brilliant Willing's Delta IV pendant lamp, $1840

Ms. Adelman (who employed Ms. Brittain until last year) is known for chandeliers with handblown glass volumes projecting from spare, branchlike arms, as well as her You Make It series of DIY light fixtures built from off-the-shelf parts. "I'm constantly searching for an economy of means, which is probably how most industrial designers think," she said. "And because the form itself is minimal, the edges have to be perfect."

As she has become more successful, Ms. Adelman has delved deeper into the minimal-artisanal approach. At the Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan this week, she introduced 25 candlesticks designed with flakes of cast brass sparingly affixed to sleek, barely tapered cylinders lathe-turned from walnut wood.

Scott Fellows and Craig Bassam, owners of New Canaan, Conn.–based furniture studio BassamFellows, also are faces of the movement. After two years in business in Switzerland, the partners moved back to the United States and brought their manufacturing with them for convenience. The company ultimately settled on carpentry and upholstery workshops in Lancaster County, Pa., which happened to be located near reserves of hardwood. All that proximity meant less travel for the designers. The local origins also helped convince retailer Design Within Reach to begin selling the duo's sophisticated yet highly tactile ash and walnut Tractor Stools a year and a half ago.

Independent studios and big companies alike are dialing up their made-in-America credentials. Since the mid-2000s, Minneapolis-based Room & Board has sourced approximately 90% of its inventory domestically. As of this year, all its wood collections are made in the U.S. A series of wood-banded pieces called Moro, previously imported from China, is now made in Vermont by longtime company supplier Lyndon Woodworking.

One reason behind the American manufacturing boom is improved production conditions domestically—or at least more difficulty elsewhere. Tyler Hays is the founder of the upscale brand BDDW, whose Philadelphia woodworkers and metalsmiths pair muscular wood elements with wabi-sabi bronze pedestals and casework. He said that falling wages in post-recession America have become competitive with increasingly pricey Chinese labor, and that "you can spend $4 in fossil fuel for shipping a $10 item overseas."

“The basic yet refined lines allow more whimsical furniture pieces to stand out.”

Rich Brilliant Willing sells home furnishings it designs to match the capabilities of local fabricators. Its Delta lighting collection, for instance, is produced by a lamp-shade facility in New Jersey. The New York–based company, whose work has an improvised quality, also licenses its designs to manufacturers with overseas operations, but co-founder Charles Brill described this as a series of missed opportunities. Refinements get lost in translation, more quality controls are required, and time zones and transport schedules delay prototyping and production.

Overall, domestic costs have come down enough for BDDW's Mr. Hays to create more affordable furniture and home accessories, such as collapsible bookshelves and wood cutting boards for the wholesale company Lostine. "We're making a bigger profit on pieces made in America than stuff made in China, and there's huge, huge interest at the Anthropologie price point," he said. The flash-sale website Fab.com also demonstrates the booming demand in this market segment. As of deadline, the online retailer was running sales of garden tools created by a Montana blacksmith and forged-steel lighting made in Illinois that the site described as having an "unpretentious, minimalist sensibility with a rough-hewn edge."

David McFadden, chief curator of the Museum of Art and Design in New York, thinks such simplicity and sturdiness is "a lingering response to the economics of the past few years." Los Angeles–based interior designer Ruth Storc, who writes the blog Design Patriot with her graphic-designer husband, Michael, agreed that the New American Minimalism captures a moment when conspicuous consumption is largely out of fashion. But she said these designs also embody the desire to support local economies.

"People are interested in all things artisanal, because they want to know where the things they live with are being made and by whom," she said. "Perhaps there is a bit of a backlash against globalization and technology."

Fab.com co-founder and chief creative officer Bradford Shane Shellhammer, a direct beneficiary of that modern technology, predicts the movement will last: "It's hard to check responsible consumption at the door and go back to mass-produced things that have no stories to be told."

Jason Varney

Lostine's Tall Wide Market Bookcase, $1,250

Responsibility simply looks good, too. Kimberly Ayres, the San Francisco designer whose sunshiny interiors might seem at odds with the pared lines and visible mechanics of the new minimalism, embraces these furnishings precisely for their counterpoint quality. "The basic yet refined lines allow more whimsical furniture pieces to stand out" while, she said, "the handmade quality is grounding."

The versatility of minimal artisanship is what drove the recent partnership between Chicago carpet-tile company FLOR and Atlas Industries. The small Brooklyn manufacturer is perhaps best known for a modular wall-mounted storage system that, according to Atlas co-founder Thomas Wright, resists the economies of mass production. Atlas is furnishing a new chain of retail stores for the DIY flooring firm. Wright's partner, Joseph Fratesi, said that the functionality and character of their work gives customers "a different experience of the built world."

Jerry Helling, president of Lenoir, N.C.-based contract furnishings giant Bernhardt Design—which is hosting a temporary gallery show entitled "America Made Me" during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York next month—concurs that American furniture design lately has embraced simplicity, craft and sustainability. He also notes that a planned-obsolescence attitude still pervades the American furniture industry, so we may soon see more ornate furniture again. Mr. Hays, of BDDW and Lostine, argues that American-made furniture is here to stay, no matter what stripe or style. "It's green and good for the economy," he said. "Local fits everybody's agenda."

[thedailycaveat-blog-blog]

If you're following the Sokol story closely you could do a lot worse than to catch up with Francine McKenna over at re: The Auditors.  You can be sure she's tackling it from all angles. Start here.

Francine is headed to the Berkshire shareholder meeting this weekend. Reading her follow-up next week should be on your to-do list.

[thedailycaveat-blog-blog]

Kevin Lacroix of the D&O Diary on the case:

Berkshire Hathaway’s Audit Committee has determined that David Sokol’s trades in Lubrizol shares prior to Berkshire’s announced acquisition of the company “violated company policies.” It also determined that his “misleadingly incomplete disclosures” to Berkshire management “violated the duty of candor he owed the Company.”  The Audit Committee reported these findings in an April 26 report to the Berkshire board, which released on its website on April 27, 2011. The report and accompanying press release can be found here.

More here.

[deniscollins]

As a money manager, what is more damaging: losing money on a deal or damaging the company's reputation?

In testimony to Congress in 1991, Mr. Warren Buffett said he expected all his employees "to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper, to be read by their spouses, children and friends, with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter. If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless."

Investors were shocked to learn this week that David Sokol, a trusted lieutenant to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett, had bought nearly $10 million worth of stock in Lubrizol just over a week before he suggested to Mr. Buffett that Berkshire should acquire the company.

Leave aside the obvious point that Mr. Sokol might not have lived up to Berkshire's high ethical standards. Focus instead on this: If even Mr. Buffett can fail to appreciate a potential conflict of interest under his very nose, then ordinary investors need to realize just how pervasive and insidious conflicts are throughout the financial world.

In the past few weeks alone, a chemist at the Food and Drug Administration was charged with trading on confidential information about drug approvals; a former Goldman Sachs Group director has been accused of leaking secrets to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam; and Mr. Rajaratnam has gone on trial for allegedly masterminding an insider-trading ring. The director and the hedge-fund manager maintain their innocence; the chemist hasn't yet been arraigned.

But how could Mr. Buffett, universally regarded as a beacon of integrity, have let Mr. Sokol's unusual trading occur unchecked?