Ask Alex - August 25, 2017

Fast as Molasses AFB

Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers.  Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.

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Hey look...Alex managed to turn out a column two weeks in a row! In fairness, this one is a little thin, but I can only answer what I am asked, so really it is your fault, not mine. We’re going to tackle booze, with a little side-visit to the Great Molasses Flood, then move on to pizza toppings, fantasy football rankings and some instructions on how to win the lottery! Finally, we'll explore Dave's hatred of the less fortunate and I’ll give you a construction update.

Submitted by: Sicariothrax

If you could live off of vodka and rum alone, would you do it?

You ask this question like I have never tried…

So, the answer to the question is an obvious “No”, for a whole bunch of reasons. First, I’d be drunk all the time, and that seems like a problem. I’ll give you a moment to get over your “But Alex, you are drunk all the time” laughing fits… (truth: it’s been a very boozy summer.)

I do, however, spend most of my time sober for both professional and personal reasons. Drunk Alex is a fun Alex, but sober Alex is the one that needs to show up at work every day and get the children to and from school. Also, given the substance abuse issues of both of my parents, it is probably not a great idea for me to drink that much.

Let's learn some stuff, shall we? I will note that the word “Vodka” is a diminutive form of the Slavic word вода (“vo da”) and therefore means “little water”. Since water is the second most acutely important thing required for human survival, I feel like Vodka probably qualifies as life-supporting sustenance, no? That’s what I am going to tell myself, at least. {Memo: explore changing the name of cocaine to "little oxygen"}

Rum, it should be said, kinda sucks. I appreciate that it has historically been used as money, and I’ll never turn down the punch from any one of 100 bars in the Virgin Islands, but I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had a drink with rum in it anywhere else. I made a bread pudding for an office bake-off a couple of years ago that needed rum, and I am pretty sure I packed up the remainder of that rum before construction started last month without taking so much as a sip in between.

WAIT!!! Hold on, I just remembered...I do like a good Dark and Stormy now and again, so let’s not go banning rum just yet. Maybe just the clear stuff. We’ll file it under affirmative action: dark coloring is to be viewed as an affirmative characteristic in rum when filling out your liquor cabinet.

Fun fact time!!! Sugar products were first fermented into alcohol in India and China several thousand years ago and Marco Polo reported “a good sugar wine” on his travels. Modern rum distillation started in the 1600’s in the Caribbean when slaves discovered that molasses (a byproduct of sugar refining) could be fermented into liquor. From there, its popularity spread throughout the New World rapidly, and there were distilleries in New York and Boston within the decade.

I can’t talk about molasses distilling in Boston without touching on the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. As funny as the idea of a really slow-moving wave of molasses is, it’s really quite the tragedy. The flood resulted when a storage tank burst and a 2.3 million gallon wave raced through the streets of the North End at nearly 35 mph (turns out that “slow as molasses” is pretty fast when it is flooding out of a storage tank). In the end, 21 people died, 150 were injured and several blocks were demolished and buried under several feet of molasses. I’m also pretty sure that everything in the greater Boston area was sticky until about 1937...

Back to rum, though: it was so popular, in fact, that both Connecticut and Massachusetts tried to ban the sale of rum in the 1650’s, which probably seemed like a good activity with which to fill the time left over when they stopped burning witches.  

That, of course, failed, and the triangular trade of slaves to the colonies and rum to Europe turned out to be a super fun happy time for everyone involved! This went on until Kunta Kinte and Jackie Robinson parted the Erie Canal and led the slaves to freedom in Poyais.

The end.

Submitted by: ST

Hey Alex, I want draft advice for the QB position, but really, who else is there besides Number 12?

Nobody that matters, that’s for sure!

Fantasy football rule #1 is that, in most normal leagues, Quarterbacks don’t really matter. Which is kinda stupid. They are the most important players in actual football, and it seems kinda dumb to devalue the most important position in the sport you are mimicking. But, since a normal league has 12 teams and each team starts one QB, only the top 12 players make it into anyone’s lineup on a weekly basis, and the difference between the best QB and the 12th best Quarterback is not that big.

At least not compared to the difference between the best Running Back or Wide Receiver and the last player who is drafted to be a starter on someone’s team. Depending on your league format, there are likely at least 24 of each, and maybe as many as 48 WR’s that are being drafted for the purpose of being someone’s starter. There is an easy fix to this - have every team use two starting QB’s every week - but fantasy football players seem content to devalue Quarterbacks.

Math: according to the rules of the just-formed Misfit Fantasy Football League, the highest scoring QB last year was Aaron Rodgers,with 385 points. The 12th highest scorer (the “worst” starter) was Blake Bortles and he scored 270. There were a half dozen players who scored between 260 and 270 behind him. So, by draft Rodgers, you are gaining 115 points over the worst team at that position, and about 85 points over the median player. Compare that to RB, where David Johnson’s 327 points were nearly 200 points more than the 24th best, and 150 points better than the median starter. This doesn't’ even count the effect of the W/R swing position, which likely means that most teams are starting three Running Backs every week, not two.

So, the first piece of advice is to not draft one for a while. There is no point in taking Drew Brees in the first round and then trying to fill out your starting RB and WR positions with randoms taken in the fifth and sixth round if you can instead draft Julio Jones or LeSean McCoy and then still get a Quarterback like Russell Wilson or Andrew Luck in the fifth or sixth round. But, once you start drafting, assuming you use standard rules, you should take the top 12 in this order: Rodgers, Brady (cuz you don’t get extra points for winning), Brees, Luck, Ryan, Wilson, Cousins, Newton(cuz you don’t get extra points for being ridiculously good-looking), Winston, Mariota, Prescott, Dalton. (While there will always only be one “Number 12”, it is helpful that Aaron Rodgers also wears #12).  Frankly, you can basically throw a blanket over the last six there and the next six...there just isn’t much difference at all.

None of which is as important as this huge announcement: THERE IS GOING TO BE A MISFIT FANTASY FOOTBALL LEAGUE!!! We're going to have a couple of openings since some of us won't play (*cough* Rex and Musket are afraid to lose to girls *cough*), and you can message one of us if you want to take one of those spots. We'll come up with some means of randomly selecting the last couple of players if we have more interest than we have spots.

Submitted by: Anonymous

Help me, Alex. I am in charge of ordering pizza for a party in an office of 75 people and I don’t know how much or what kinds to order. What do I do?

The "how much" is pretty easy. In a normal office, two pieces per person (of eight-slice pies) is more than enough, especially if you have other food. Some people (lactose intolerants, glutenophiles and communists) don’t eat pizza, and a lot of people will only have one slice. If you order 19 pizzas, you will probably have a couple left over.

You do need to adjust that based on the type of office, though. Is the staff mostly young men or abnormally fat people? Are any of them physically active at work - warehouse workers, construction, etc? Do you work with Joey Chestnut: the Second Greatest Living American? If so, then you may want to get a couple more pizzas. By similar logic, if the office is largely women and you are also getting salad and other stuff, you can cut a couple out.

This question, though, has gotten me thinking about a pet peeve of mine: most people over-top their pizza. I’m not sure if this is a new phenomenon or not, but Americans seem to have decided that every pizza should have an entire other entree spread over it. If you want to eat pizza, then eat pizza...don’t dump an entire Pu Pu Platter on top of it.  Burying a pizza in toppings does nothing but demonstrate that, deep down, you probably just don’t like pizza.

I love plain cheese pizza. I love pepperoni pizza. I love mushroom pizza. Really, I love all kinds of pizza so long as you terrorists don’t put any fucking pineapples on it. There in only one fruit that belongs anywhere near a pizza, and if you go reaching for any non-tomatoes, you deserve to have your hands cut off. In fact, I believe that Hammurabi’s complete, un-edited code called for the severing of the hand of any man who put pineapple on pizza. (Chef’s note: caramelized onions and ham is a similar combination that is not, you know, abjectly disgusting).

You also shouldn’t put olives on pizza, but that is only because olives are a trash food that tastes like candle wax mixed with garbage water. I had dinner once in a restaurant in Boston of  tremendous acclaim run by a world-renowned chef and they served Green Olive Ice Cream for dessert...I nearly walked out. I mean, we were done eating, so that wouldn’t have been a terribly dramatic action, but still. It tasted like frozen olive oil (and I love olive oil, in its non-frozen varieties).

Other than that, though, you can put pretty much whatever you want on your pizza, so long as you don’t put too much of it. I tend to like salty stuff (TWSS) more than I like sweet or spicy things or vegetables. Actually, while we are at it, who are you kidding...hold the vegetables and stop pretending you care about the health benefits of your pizza. It’s white bread and cheese...you’re not markedly improving the health score of your dinner because you also also ate a green pepper. I don’t care how much pizza you order and who is eating it, you will have leftover veggie pizza because no one really wants to eat it. It’s like buying a cookie sampler plate - at the end, the last cookie sitting there on the plate will always be oatmeal raisin. People don’t eat that kind of shit food unless all other options are exhausted.

To answer your question, though, go heavy on the plain and the pepperoni - not that those are everyone’s favorites, but no one will complain if they can’t find their favorites so long as those staples are in abundance. Maybe four or five of each, so about half of the total. Beyond that, just fill in with whatever looks good. I’m sure someone will eat the chicken pesto and the sausage and peppers, and you probably even have some morally bankrupt people who want veggie pizza, too. (Memo to HR: fire those people). So, pick some that seem like they may be good, and then get ready to tell everyone to fuck off for complaining about your choices.

Submitted by: J-Bone

Did you win the lottery? What are you gonna do with your $730 million? [$760 million]

Sadly, I did not win the lottery, so I am stuck like everyone else on Twitter wishing that I had Brownskin money. The winner is somewhere here in Massachusetts, though, so there is a chance that I know them! (Fact check: no there is not). Weirdly, the lottery commission announced that the winning ticket was sold at a convenience store in Watertown (of Tsarnaev fame), only to correct itself and tell us that the winning ticket was sold in Chicopee (of absolutely no fame at all, save for being a pretty shitty place to live).

But...I am here to help, so I am going to give all of you some advice on what to do if, in fact, you ever win several hundred million dollars in a lottery. And to do so, I enlisted the help of a very special guest wealth management expect, the devastatingly handsome Mr. Alex, currently on location with the children…

The very first thing you should do is absolutely nothing. The woman who won marched right down to the lottery office and claimed her prize, which is probably a really, really stupid way to handle it. You’re going to want to lay low. I know you want to tell everyone you know, but really, I can’t stress this enough...don’t say a word to anyone! Not your parents, or your kids or your brothers and sisters. You will have plenty of time to tell the necessary people later on, and there is a lot to be gained by keeping this a secret. Next, drive to the nearest bank, get a safe deposit box and put the ticket in there for the time being.

After that, you need to get in touch with an advisor who has experience dealing with ultra high net-worth clients. This doesn’t mean your cousin Joey who sells mutual funds and shitty life insurance products for a retail financial planner. You need a person/people who understand the legal and financial ramifications of this money. If you have nowhere to go, you can try your bank’s trust department, but the wealth management practice in the biggest law firm you can find may be a good place to start, too. Or, think about the richest person you know and ask them for a recommendation.

{True story: Chris Gabrielli, a wealthy venture capitalist who ran for Governor and Senator of Massachusetts, had a housekeeper once win like $100 million in a lottery. She was an immigrant from somewhere in South America who had the good sense to ask him what to do. The actual prize wasn’t claimed for a couple weeks while her newly assembled legal team figured out the details.}

They will ask you a million questions about what you want to do with all of this money and then walk you through the appropriate way to proceed. The decisions you make before you actually present the ticket to the lottery office will have huge ramifications for how much money you end up with, and who knows that you suddenly have all of this money. As one minor example: in some states, you can claim the prize anonymously, but in others you need to make your identity known. However, you might be able to get around that by funding the NotYourName Revocable Trust with the ticket, after which the Trustee, as legal owner of the trust property, is the person or institution who goes on record as the winner. Your long-lost relatives and former classmates with sob stories and great business ideas will never know you now have all of that money!

A couple other things to remember, as well. Like, that you didn’t actually win $760 million. You won a series of annual payments with a nominal total of $760 million, but a present value of something less than that. And if you want to take a lump sum instead of your annuity (which you should, since the implied return on the annuity is pretty low) you actually win $480 million. Which, obviously, is still an awful lot of money.

Only, you didn’t really win $480 million, either, because you need to pay taxes on that. The actual amount you owe will depend on how you receive the money, but as a starting point, the winner is going to owe somewhere near $190 million in Federal taxes and $24 million in Massachusetts state taxes. The actual pile of money that you will end up with is going to be on the order of $265 million. {Note: this is not to be confused with the $120 million that will be withheld from the payout as prepayment of your Federal taxes: you will owe the difference between that and your ultimate tax liability when you file your 2017 Income Tax return.}

This is clearly still enough money to live like Puff Daddy for the rest of your life, but it is only about one third of the advertised jackpot.  You can offset that tax liability by giving money away to charitable causes (but beware: giving it away to non-charitable causes might INCREASE the tax liability; see below). It may very well make sense to establish a charitable trust, which allows you to take the tax deduction now as an offset to your huge winnings but decide the specific recipients of your largesse later on.

Example: say you have a brother that has been your best friend for your whole life and who you really want to share this with. You think that giving him $25 million is a totally reasonable gift that will change his life and barely even put a dent in your fortune. BUT...simply writing him a check for $25 million is going to cost you between $8 million and $10 million above and beyond the gift in the form of gift tax. There are better ways to give money to him and his family that don’t have the same tax ramifications (like making annual exclusion gifts directly to him and his family, paying for his or his kids’ education, etc.)

And that is is really why you need the professionals to guide you...a good one will ask you a lot of questions to understand what and who you might like to give money to, and how you would like to enjoy your newfound riches. They will also do the required math to make sure you don’t manage to live beyond your means, which is surprisingly easy, even at these massive dollar levels. They’ll save you from yourself.

Once they’ve worked with you to make a plan (a process that is going to take some time), THEN it is time to get that ticket out of the safe deposit box and start buying Bentleys!!!

Submitted by: Brown Skin

My contractor had to rip out a large section of curb, gutter, and ramp because the slope exceeded the max. 8.33% grade required by our onerous federal ADA regulations. The aggregate slope was 8.92%, which is negligible unless you use a smart level. My question: Are you installing an elevator in your building?

Oh, so Scrooge McWarbucks hates handicapped people...why does this not surprise me?! First you try to build a ramp that will plunge the wheelchair-bound to certain death at breakneck speeds, and then you try and pretend it was an “accident”. You probably took out insurance policies on the little old ladies using that ramp, didn’t you? You’re a monster, BrownSkin...a monster. Don’t you already have enough money?!

This question reads like you are somehow blaming the ADA because you don’t know the building codes. Aren’t you an engineer?!? Can’t you do your own math on the slope of your accessibility ramps? I’m starting to wonder if maybe you aren’t a very good engineer, Dave! I mean, here on a 25 foot ramp (I’m guessing) you missed by a full two inches. TWO INCHES...aren’t you supposed to be more accurate than that?! You can do an awful lot of damage with an extra two inches (TWSS!)

The real answer to your question is that we are replacing an elevator. I live on the fourth floor (third from the front door, fourth from the rear of the building) and our completed, combined unit will occupy that floor and the one above. The building currently has a (very old) freight elevator that is not approved to carry people, and which I would be terrified to get into. It’s good for carrying groceries and furniture, but the people have to take the stairs. We are replacing that with a passenger elevator that will be more useful.

Pleasant surprise: elevators are not actually as expensive as I'd thought. Unpleasant surprise: the work required to widen the elevator shaft is really, really invasive. Since our place is already torn apart, that isn’t a big deal, but for the people on the lower floors, it requires ripping out and moving some walls by a foot or so. Since this adds very little value to the unit that occupies the bottom two floors, we’re paying for all of that work (and we are fortunate that they agreed to lose a little bit of space in their foyer and a bedroom and go through the construction), which makes the retrofitting quite the endeavor.

Speaking of...construction update! Electricians have been working furiously for a couple of weeks and have a couple more weeks of work to do. The last of the original knob and tube wiring is getting replaced, along with some other old wiring, and...well, pretty much everything else. I think the rough plumbing is done to the kitchen and the bathrooms, and the old stuff that went to the kitchen upstairs is all gone.

Also...random note...I’ve had like five different neighbors tell me that they have shit in their basement that they want to get rid of and asking if they can pay us to throw it in our dumpster. Is there seriously a giant swath of Americans just sitting around waiting for someone to clean out their basement? Is there a business to be built that involves simply driving around with a dump truck for people to throw shit away that can’t go out in the regular trash? Like an ice cream truck, only instead of selling ice cream, you just take trash away. But still use the cool jingle?

Speaking of, I’ll close with a definitive ranking of the best ice cream truck treats:

1. Chipwich
2. Choco Taco
3. Cookies and Cream Bar
4. Chocolate Eclair/Strawberry Shortcake Bars
5. Drumsticks

See you next week!