You Say Harem, I Say Whorehouse

Posted by Bess Levin, Oct 04, 2007, 2:06pm

warren_buffett.jpgMost of you are too young to remember this, but back in 1974, when I was working at Salomon Brothers, stocks were really undervalued. How undervalued were they? So undervalued that my good friend Warren Buffett once told me they made him feel “like an oversexed guy in a whorehouse.” We were in his office at the time, which, by the way, looked (and still looks) like a Russ Meyer set, so the bounds of propriety didn’t stop us from having a good laugh about it. ‘Forbes’ actually heard about the analogy and wanted to use it in a profile they were writing about the old boy, which they did, but changed the last word to “harem.” But, for the record, it was originally “whorehouse.” So now you know.

James Michaels, Longtime Forbes Editor, Dies at 86 [New York Times]

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Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 2:09PM

fucking awesome.

Posted by LippyTex, Oct 04, 2007 2:12PM

When I got out of undergrad at UT-Austin in 1975, the DJI was "500" as I recall. My first calculator, a Bomar, cost $100.00.

Two years prior, Houston's Marvin Zindler got the Chicken Ranch cat house in LaGrange, TX, closed. A straight date was $10.00 and a "half and half" was $15.00.

Ah....those were the days!

Posted by huh?, Oct 04, 2007 2:16PM

"back in 1974, when I was working at Salomon Brothers"

Posted by Keep those Seinfeld References Coming - Russ Meyer, Oct 04, 2007 2:21PM

Anonymous

Posted by joe, Oct 04, 2007 2:25PM

Going back to flying commercial after flying private is like going back to holding hands

- Warren Buffett

The old man likes him some sex puns...

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 2:31PM

Wow...RIP Jim Michaels. I thought he was older than that.

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 2:39PM

LippyTex do you remember when milk men used to deliver too?

Posted by Uschi Digart, Oct 04, 2007 2:40PM

Russ Meyer was a WWII USMC combat photographer before going into the nudie flick business. That's one fine way to treat PTSS!

Posted by LippyTex, Oct 04, 2007 2:43PM

Yes, Anonymous, I do. When we moved from Illinois to Texas after the polio vaccines were available in teh mid-1950s, I remember my Dad saying he thought it was odd that we had the same milkman in Dallas as we did in Chicago. Dad said I sort of looked like him, too.

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 2:56PM

I remember having a seltzer water deliveryman, and I was born in manhattan in 1980. so maybe that was just strange. although i don't think we had one after like 1986 or so.

Posted by inIT4the$, Oct 04, 2007 3:11PM

Marvin Zindler EYE!WITNESS! NEWS! Blue hair Blue sunglasses also got the sh*t kicked out of him by the sheriff in La Grange.

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 3:33PM

LippyTex, do you remember when pluto was a planet?

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 3:58PM

ahah Lippytex, one pt. i like your style.

@2:56 the existence of the pellgrino man considerably more questionable

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 4:34PM

I'm almost positive. They came weekly in glass bottles and had these little metal trigger spiggots on top. And the guy would pick up the old ones.

Posted by , Oct 04, 2007 4:59PM

4:34 - by "the old ones" do you mean your mom and the nice older lady who lived next door?

Posted by KLW, Oct 04, 2007 5:13PM

My grandparents had seltzer delivery out in Queens until the mid-90s. So no, you didn't hallucinate that part of your childhood.

Posted by gab, Oct 04, 2007 5:46PM

Hey Lippy, what's a half and half?

Posted by LippyTex, Oct 04, 2007 7:08PM

To: Anon at 3:33...Remember it?, Hell I wrote it!

To: gab at 5:46...A "half and half" was a brief French lessson and then the "straight date". You knocked on the door and were admitted in the "parlor" that was tastefully decorated. Seven or eight ladies would then stroll in and talk to each other as though you weren't there. Then one would ask you to buy her a Coca-Cola or ask for a dollar for the jukebox. As I was only 18 at the time and a newbie, I was advised by more experienced team members that to begin negotiations, you asked the lady for a "date" at which point you were hustled off to a nice boudoir and began the discussion of the "menu". The night I was there I was dressed in an intramural baseball uniform. Our team was called the "Nads" and our friends would cheer us by shouting "Go Nads!", but I digress. Anyway, the experience was made even more interesting because a member of a statewide police organization was there in uniform as I rounded a corner hallway with my "date". He advised my shocked face to "behave". That I did. As I reflect on that dumb activity now, I recall I was pretty let down on the long back to Austin and felt foolish. There was a tour bus there that nightat the Chicken Ranch now that I think back on the event.

Posted by , Oct 05, 2007 7:33AM

KLW - oh thank god. i was getting worried i was prematurely senile at 27

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