Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
April 13, 2018: Fly down, belt askew, former President ogles young lovelies
February, 2018: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on sexual harassment:
“From Hollywood, to politics, to factory floors, everywhere women are telling the truth about their lives,” the former secretary of state said. “I pledge to continue to speak out, I pledge to never give up. I will do everything I can.”
Dinner time at the Clinton household must be fun.
White children engaged in cultural expropriation
Sports announcer suspended for using the term "cotton-picking mind"
The Oklahoma City Thunder suspended play-by-play announcer Brian Davis for one game following his racially insensitive comment about Thunder star Russell Westbrook.
During the Thunder's final regular-season game on Wednesday night, Davis said that Westbrook was "out of his cotton-picking mind" following a nifty assist by the guard. Westbrook finished the game with six points, 20 rebounds and 19 assists, as he clinched averaging a triple-double for the second straight season.
Davis issued a statement to ESPN in which he said, "It is with great remorse and humility that I accept this suspension for the insensitive words I used during Wednesday's broadcast. While unintentional, I understand and acknowledge the gravity of the situation."
"I offer my sincere apology and realize that, while I committed a lapse in judgement, such mistakes come with consequences. This is an appropriate consequence for my actions.”
The phrase is explained as follows:
What's the origin of the phrase 'Cotton-picking'?
It can come as as little surprise that the term 'cotton-picking' originated in the southern states of the USA, where it is usually pronounced cotton-pickin'. It began life in the late 1700s and differs from the 19th century Dixie term, 'cottonpicker', in that the latter was derogatory and racist, whereas 'cotton-picking' referred directly to the difficulty and harshness of gathering the crop. This didn't extend to the specific expression 'keep your cotton-picking hands off of me'. This no doubt alludes to the horny, calloused (and usually black) hands that picked cotton.
Manual cotton picking was tough work. The southern expression 'cutting in high cotton', which means 'have it easy', refers to the relatively easy task of cutting cotton without having to bend down.
Where memory doesn't play tricks is when recalling the works of the sainted Bugs Bunny. While not originating the term, Bugs can claim to have done more to fix it into the language than the rest of rabbitkind, especially in its most often used form 'Wait just a cotton-picking minute'. There's an example in Bully for Bugs, 1953:
"Just a cotton-pickin' minute, this don't look like the Coachella Valley to me!"
In this instance, the poor groveling announcer meant it as a compliment, after a player had made a spectacular play: "He's out of his cotton-picking mind", but no matter, some people interpret it refer to slaves picking cotton, and so a person emptying the phrase is guilty of racism. Intent means nothing, actual meaning means nothing: if someone has a false, ignorant "knowledge" of any phrase or word and is offended, the guillotine awaits.
The country's gone insane.
Separate but equal
Scripps College endorses a "blacks only" pool party.
We're back to women's only dorms, black dorms, and segregated classrooms. All that's left to return us to the happy days of the past is to bring back white-men's-only clubs and fraternities.
Not all that long ago, America decided that this was wrong.
Sixty-five years ago, in 1953, Tom Lehrer released this song as satire. In 1980, he said he'd long since given up attempting to satirize anything, and he was right to do so. He's about 90 now and so far, hasn't been lured out of retirement — maybe Scripps can invite him to its campus so that he can be shouted down and silenced by the Social Justice Warriors.
118 Glenwood Drive
118 Glenwood Drive, direct waterfront. It's one of Chris Finlay's listings, and give him, and his clients, credit: the house was listed just this past May, at $17.925, and they've already taken it down $4 million. All of us can overestimate a property's value: few can acknowledge our error so rapidly.
I'll confess that I like this home's location more than I do its architecture, but that is of course just one man's opinion, and irrelevant, since I'm not in the buying pool. Belle Haven's a special place, and this house will surely appeal to those with differing tastes. I'll leave it to the market to decide what its true value is, because the combination of direct waterfront and Belle Haven pushes prices way beyond comparable houses on dry land in other neighborhoods. Still, if I had to guess, I'd say that today's price is coming close.
37 tower roAD
I wrote about this house almost exactly a year ago, when it hit the market at $7.9995. I liked it; many readers didn't, but I think the general consensus of all of us was the it wasn't going to fetch its asking price. It didn't, but I'm sure there was a huge amount room in that price (they paid $2.2 for the land) to ensure that the builders made out very well, even at $6.3.
25 Dublin Hill Road sold new in December, 2004, for $6.750 million. That buyer put it up for sale last month for $5.995, and reduced it today to $5.395, so kudos to her for immediately reacting to market indifference, but I think her best tactic, besides continuing to slash her price and absorb an ever-growing loss, is to entirely rethink the decorating scheme. In fact, if I were advising her, and I certainly am not (nor am I likely to in the future, given this review), I'd completely remove everything her interior decorator crammed into this house and live with bare walls, ceilings and even white-painted walls. I won't say this is the worst decoration job I've ever encountered, because I've been in this grubby racket for 18 years or so, and Greenwich decorators have produced monstrosities throughout the high-end housing stock, but it's certainly up there in my top-ten.
The house was built by BSF * , who, despite a tendency to produce boring, identical homes, has a reputation for top-quality construction, and this one is no exception. In fact, it looks far more interesting than the typical BSF spec house, but the horrible decorating makes it almost impossible to see past the floss to the quality underneath.
Call in the tag sale ladies and then sell this house.
IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE A CHILD'S BEDROOM? IF SO, WHY?
HOW MANY PEOPLE, EXACTLY, DO YOU WANT IN YOUR BEDROOM?
AND ROOM FOR TWO MORE SPECTATORS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BED
This bird is going to get wet
* The Doverton Drive spec project mentioned in the article was One Doverton, listed for $10.950 million in 2015 and sold for $6.6 million at the close of 2017.
25 Game Cock Road, which was priced at $4.9 million last May, is today priced at $3.950. Yes, it's Byram, but waterfront, even in that part of town, usually finds a buyer more easily than this one.
The exception to that generalization comes when a particular home is overpriced, but in this case, we can forgive the owner for pricing it where he did: the town tax department appraised it (100%) $4,690,400. That's not to say the town is always right, the number must have added support to the decision to slap a $4.9 price tag on it.
On the bright side, the next owner can probably look forward to a significant reduction in his property tax.
(Afterthought: the house is in the VE (17') and AE (14') flood zones. It was built in 2005, before the hight requirements for those zones were increased so drastically. If it's non-compliant, and I'm betting it is, that's a real turn-off for many buyers.)
67 Lockwood Road
67 Lockwood Road, asking $2.975 million, is reported as pending. The owners paid $3.2 million for it in 2007, when it was new. That's not a huge loss, even assuming the final selling price is going to be lower than ask, but there was a time when real estate, especially in Riverside, appreciated over time, not depreciated.
23 Khakum Wood Road has been for sale, on-and-on, since 2007, when it started with eight+ acres and price tag of $19.7 million. In 2004, after a break, it came back on for $16.8 million, and has slowly dropped ever since. In 2016 (or so) it spun off a building lot, leaving it with 5 or its original 8 acres, but that extra lot's worth, maybe, $2 million, so today's price of $10 for the house makes that original 2004 price of almost $20 look ... grossly aspirational.
Thanks, fella
Trump agrees to pardon Scooter Libby.
My older brother John suggests that the next time Trump needs a distraction that will cause the press to drop whatever it's pursuing that day, he should pardon Bernie Madoff.
Love it.
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