Ask Alex - January 27, 2017

Alexandra F. Baldwin

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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This week we have some of my favorite topics, including teenage girls (of which I am a verifiable expert), hot chicks, my hilariously dysfunctional upbringing, the stock market and food!

Submitted by: Anonymous

This is so superficial but it's been nagging at me...my daughter is brilliant (no really she is - she gets straight A's in all pre-AP classes). She has a sharp, quick wit; she's kind and thoughtful and independent and everything I could possibly want in a child. She turned 14 last November and will start high school this fall. And she is adamant about not shaving her legs, wearing makeup, or getting her ears pierced. I am not the slightest bit concerned about the makeup and earrings.

However, the "I don't want to ever shave my legs" thing is bugging the CRAP out of me. I can't - and won't - force her to do it, that's not my style. I won't even criticize her. I don't do that to her, ever. But still, it's kind of bugging me. Won't she get mocked for this? Should I care? 

So...your daughter has decided that she’s a lesbian. Congratulations! This is really wonderful news!!! You will never have to deal with dating boys or random pregnancy scares and you can also expect to save a lot of money on dresses and hair products. Beyond that, you will have another Mother of the Bride to split wedding costs with...when it is all said and done, you’re going to get a vacation or a new car out of this. It’s truly a great day!

To answer your first question: yes, she will be mocked. She’s going to be in high school with fellow students who mock their peers for anything that is unusual. Deciding to rock the native look is an open invitation to ridicule. But frankly, if it’s not her hairy legs it would be something else. It might be for being tall. Or for being short. Or being smart or being dumb, or having big boobs or small boobs or any one of 100 other things. It will be something, though.

Second question: no, you shouldn’t care. I “know” your daughter well enough to know that she sports the self-confidence to not be shaken by those inevitable sasquatch jokes. She knows that most of her friends are devoting significant attention to looking and dressing in just the right way already, and she has decided that (for now at least) she’s just not interested. She’s confident enough in herself to not care whether people think she looks great at every moment, and she has already shown the ability to make good decisions for herself so I wouldn’t lose a whole lot of sleep over this.

I’m also going to go out on a limb and predict that this is a pretty short phase. Most likely, she’s gonna have a crush on some boy and a friend is going to tell her that he will like her legs better if they are shaved. And as stupid a reason as that is to give up your own convictions, she will do it because she will be 15 and care more about the cute boy than her previously held convictions. Or he’ll invite her to a semi-formal dance and her friends will convince her that she’ll really kill it in that black dress if she shaves.

Or maybe she will want to take a spin at amateur night at Score’s and they will make her shave before they let her on stage! Really it could be any one of a bunch of things…

One thing to remember about teenage girls though, telling her repeatedly to shave her legs is only going to increase her desire to walk around like Teen Wolf. There are people that teenagers listen to about issues of social importance, and their mothers are NOT on that list (their friend’s older sister/guardian is, though, and boy do I have some stories!)

And if she never decides to shave her legs? You can look forward to the fantastically entertaining moment when your husband has to accept a son-in-law who digs chicks with hairy legs! Really, though, this is hardly the end of the world...so far, this seems to be the single biggest disappointment that she has brought you in her fourteen years on earth, which puts you WAY ahead of the game, parenting-wise.

It’s a lot better that than dealing with a teenager who dresses like a porn star, swills peach schnapps and trade blow jobs for rides to tattoo parlor!

Submitted by: LunaticRex

May I ask three? OK, thanks. 1) 9mm or .40S&W? 2) automatic or manual? 3) Italy or Spain?

1) Easy...the 40 caliber. I mean, what kind of metric system loving, America-hating Prusso-phile would pick the 9MM? If you want to own the official firearm of Lincoln Chaffee’s Presidential campaign, then by all means, have at it. I choose freedom, baseball, apple pie and twist-off bottle caps. But I do kinda want a pretzel. And maybe a World Cup Victory.

2) Usually, I prefer a stick (TWSS!)  I like to be engaged while I am driving and I get bored and don’t know what to do with my right hand if I am driving an automatic (my God, these jokes are writing themselves!!!)

Fun story time!!! I learned to drive a standard transmission when I was about 11 years old in just about the most White Trash way possible. My mother, a truly world class drunk, got herself hammered enough that the bar she was in took her keys away...she refused to take a cab or leave her car there overnight and insisted that the bar call her daughter to come and get her. So, little old me (I am 5’0” and weigh 98 lbs now...I was probably about 70 lbs at the time) walked the 8 or so blocks through what is objectively one of the worst ghettos in North America to the bar by myself at sometime near midnight. The bar owner clearly expected a girl somewhat older than 11, but at that point was stuck with a drunk who wouldn’t leave and a child who had no business being out of the house at that hour. He did some quick math and decided that the better option would be to let the fifth grader drive home than the drunk woman (she was DRUNK), so he pointed me in the right direction, gave me a quick tutorial on making the car go and encouraged me to not stop before I got home lest I be stranded and not be able to start again.

I hopped into my Mom’s 1986 (1985?) Toyota Tercel Hatchback with the cross-eyed drunk in the passenger seat, pulled the seat as far forward as it would go and drove home. I got us to the front door, at which point my mother decided that she could take it from there to parallel park rather than park on the grass. Feeling angry and embarrassed, I stormed inside...which is why I missed her backing into a fire hydrant.

Not sure if that Tercel is the reason I like standard transmissions, but it was the only car I drove before I left home, so it was what I got used to and what I still prefer. While I rarely drive, when I do it is one of four different cars (mine, my husband’s, my sister’s or a communal one that stays at the beach all summer), three of which are standard transmissions, so I still get my fill!

3) Hmm...I’ll go with Italy. Before I am accused of anything unseemly, let me dispel the ugly rumors that this is about some alleged anti-Saffron bias. I’m all for Spanish food and wine, but it’s hard to argue against the Italian varieties (really...try and find me a bad glass of Chianti somewhere, I dare you!). Italy also has a more functioning economy and a slightly wider variety of climates, cuisines and cultures (which isn’t to imply homogeneity of any in Spain).

Also, since I am such a good Catholic, I kinda have to answer Italy, right?

More little known facts! Through one of my very best friends, whose father is from Okinawa (and transcribed the Japanese tattoo on my shoulder), I have learned that Okinawans are Japanese in almost exactly the same way that Sicilians are Italian. It doesn’t exert the same influence over the mainland as Sicily (Okinawa is 1% of Japan’s population and about 1,000 miles from Tokyo, Sicily is nearly 10% of Italy’s population and only 275 miles from Rome), but they bear some striking similarities. Different race of people, independent history, different culture...and very much a belief among the people that they are culturally superior to the mainlanders;-)

Submitted by: Justin

What are Alex's top Boston restaurant picks?

Good question! Despite my diminutive stature, I love to eat. And while my greatest vices are chocolate chip cookies and Reese’s Peanut  Butter Cups, I sometimes eat real food, too. And not just chicken fingers!

Obviously, the answer to this sort of depends on what you want to eat and how much you feel like spending. The best Cheeseburger in Boston is at JM Curley.  Casa Razdora’s Prosciutto di Parmi is the best sandwich in the city. Sam LaGrassa’s pastrami is a worthy second. I’m going to go out on the shortest limb ever and pick Regina for pizza. Trattoria di Monica in the North End, or Neptune Oyster if you are there and don’t want Italian food (their lobster roll is rivaled only by B&G Oysters in the South End). Yvonne’s (where Locke-Ober used to be) is absolutely exquisite and may be the best restaurant in the city. So, there are a lot, and if you have a specific occasion in mind, I will happily provide a more focused array of recommendations:-)

However, if you simply want to know “What is Alex’s single favorite restaurant?” the answer is unequivocally Abe & Louie’s. The food isn’t terribly adventurous, but everything they serve is fantastic, the atmosphere is upscale but almost impossibly unpretentious. The servers are absolute professionals, the bartenders are great and the wine list is as approachable as you can get in a place like that. I spend a lot of time in there, and I have never had a bad meal.

Submitted by: Daryl

What is Alex’s favorite lobstah recipe?

You know that lobsters are just giant ocean roaches, right? Crawling around on the seafloor eating all the garbage and shit that the other ocean creatures generate. Lobsters pee from their faces...why would you eat something that pees from its face? I was going to note that they had two stomachs, but cows have four stomachs and they are really fucking delicious, so there is probably no correlation between number of stomachs and deliciousness…

Also, I just discovered that female lobsters, contrary to what you heard on Friends, are free to bang as many male lobsters as they want, and can hold the male’s sperm for as much as two years before using it to fertilize eggs. Is there a better superpower than that? Think about it, ladies, you can work your way through as many guys as you’d like, and then once you decide to have baby lobsters, you can go back and decide which of those dude lobsters from any point in the last two years is the one you most want to be the father of your baby lobster horde. Basically, every female lobster is her own sperm bank!

(By the way, Generation X, Friends is a terrible show with terribly annoying actors and terrible writing and you are terrible people for trying to tell us that that and Nirvana were actually worthwhile entertainment. Take your absurdly baggy jeans and flannel shirts and go think about what you have done.

And no pager! You’re thinking, not planning next summer’s trip to Lollapalooza with your friends.  If you hadn’t invented Seinfeld and the Simpsons, you’d be in BIG trouble. Also, please note that I am excluding Jennifer Aniston from my Friends rant because she was in Office Space and because she is nearly 50 years old and has never looked anything other than impossibly gorgeous at any single moment in those nearly 50 years.)

OK, I’m off topic. Bottom line, I don’t really love lobster. I can appreciate the theater of eating a lobster...it is kind fun, after all...but if I am just looking for a great seafood dish, I’d go with scallops, Sea Bass or Halibut before I would pick lobster.

If you are intent on eating a repository of giant ocean roach sperm, however, I’d go with a really good lobster roll (which sort of flies in the face of the “fun” part up there...whatever, I am a mysterious woman). If you go back to my previous question, you will see that I have given you two recommendations already. The common thread between those can be wrapped up in a simple rule: minimize the mayo!!! I’m not even opposed to eliminating it entirely, but at an absolute maximum, the mayonnaise on a lobster roll should be barely noticeable.

Submitted by: John Q

How are you feeling about the stock market these days? What should I be buying or selling?

Well, I can answer your first question, but I can’t legally answer your second because the provision of investment advice by an unlicensed, unregistered advisor is a violation of the Investment Advisors Act of 1940. (OK...so, maybe providing that advice without receiving compensation is maybe not a violation, you’ll have to ask the securities lawyers.)

I’ll also note that I do not generally make my own investment decisions. I happen to be married to a guy who, in addition to being a wonderful father and alarmingly good-looking, is a professional wealth manager (more or less...it’s hard to explain). I certainly talk to him about these things, but he makes the actual buy and sell decisions. Except, of course, for my decision to buy shares in Scorpio Tankers (STNG), which was driven by zero securities analysis and 100% love for Hank Scorpio. I don’t even care that I am sitting on a couple thousand dollars of paper losses...the vision of Hank driving a massive LNG tanker is worth it!

I sometimes find that financial concepts are easier to explain when put into non-financial examples. The question you have posed (a very common one) is really a question of valuation...it’s not about whether companies are individually or collectively “good” or “bad” companies, but rather whether or not those companies are worth their price.

Imagine you are shopping for a car and are comparing a Toyota Corolla and a Mercedes Benz AMG C63 S. If we are simply deciding which is the “better” car, almost any unbiased and rational actor would choose the Mercedes. No matter what attribute you measure by, the Merc will come out objectively ahead. However, it costs five times more than the Toyota. Is it “worth” five times more than the Toyota? Well, that is a highly subjective question that each buyer has to answer on his or her own based on their own factors.

Investments are somewhat similar (with some obvious differences). General Electric has been one of the world’s great companies for its entire existence. They innovate, adapt and make gobs of money. But, if you bought shares in that great company on September 8th, 2000 at  $60 per share, you are still underwater on those shares, even when accounting for dividends paid since then. On March 6th, 2009, you could have bought those same shares for $7 and be sitting on a 400% increase plus nearly all of your original $7 in dividends since the purchase. The question of whether you made a good investment, then, is not one of how good the underlying company is, but of how much you paid for that company.

One key difference between investments and consumables like the cars I cited earlier, is that an investment really only has one utility. Besides the occasional benefit derived from a love of Hank Scorpio, or the free beer and shwag that comes from attending the Boston Beer Company annual meeting, the benefits of an investment can be measured in dividends and capital gains. So, a good investment for me is much more comparable to a good investment for you (although still not exactly) than are two cars.

So, that said, and painting with very broad strokes, I don’t really love stocks at these prices. At best, the market seems fairly valued, and it is hard to see a ton of upside from here. The S&P 500 currently trades at about 26x trailing earnings, which is pretty rich in even this rate environment. As interest rates rise and the government support of asset prices is pulled back, I just think that stocks will lose some of their “default option” shine. Throughout much of the last year, the S&P 500 was yielding about 2.25% (trailing) while 10 year Treasuries were paying 1.75%. That equation gets less compelling as an argument for stocks when the dividend yield falls towards and below 2% and fixed income starts paying closer to 3.5% or higher. That chases money out of stocks.

I’m also not a fan of the new Administration’s economic protectionism, either...it will hurt overall economic growth, which will hurt corporate profits both directly and indirectly, and that will hurt stock prices. Altogether, I think these are arguments to stay away from stocks...but it is far from an overwhelming case. As inflation picks up, stocks remain a good place to be protected, and I am still not someone to challenge hundreds of years of finance history and theory that says long-term investors will benefit from holding stocks more than holders of other assets will.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I have chosen an asset allocation that is a little lighter on US stocks and a little heavier on short term bonds and cash than a normal age-appropriate asset allocation might be. Your results may vary;-)

Of course, what you should be buying and selling is largely a function of your personal risk tolerance, age and financial situation. I’d have to ask about 100 questions before I could thoroughly answer. I will tell you that the equities that I find most compelling now are lower risk equities with defensible business positions, strong balance sheets and healthy cash flows (preferably to the shareholders). This doesn’t seem like a great time to be chasing outlandish growth, it seems like a time to be cautious.

If you are more bullish on the global economy, then emerging markets have been so thoroughly beaten down as to present a lot of opportunities, energy stocks are priced as if oil and gas prices aren’t moving and I’d even say that Europe has too much pessimism built into its valuations. Also, any company that might benefit from a massive wall-building project;-)

Submitted by: Ross

As a woman can you confirm or deny something I've heard ? Women come in 3 categories: Hot, cool and single. From there you have to pick 2 . Seems accurate in my experience but looking for an informed opinion. Thanks, Ross

Quick thermodynamics lesson here...things can not be both hot and cool. They are literal opposites of each other. I’m stunned that I need to explain this to a group of adults. Or a group of Twitter users…

I assume you are intending that we are to take these by their figurative meanings, which still leads to a couple of problems. First “hot” is somewhat subjective, although there is general agreement that is broad enough for me to work with. We may argue over whether Salma Hayek is hotter or less hot than Kate Beckinsale, but it would be hard to find anyone who disagrees that each of them is unquestionably hot. Like fire.

{If I can digress here for a moment, I’d posit that Salma Hayek was hotter in Desparado than any woman has ever been at any other time in human history. It was the peak of female hotness. I would also posit that no one has ever been hotter without exposing an inch of skin below her throat than Kate Beckinsale was in Underworld.}

Back to the question...the second, and bigger issue, is that “cool” is extremely subjective and has especially different meanings when men and women are talking about each other or members of the opposite sex and the interpretations vary wildly by age. I shall sum up in the following example:

Male Friend, somewhere under age 30: Hey Alex, your friend Amanda is really cute. Is she cool?

What This Means to Alex: Is your friend laid-back and easygoing? Is she smart and funny and do people generally enjoy hanging around her? Do we possibly share similar interests and do you think that we would enjoy spending time together?

What Male Friend Means: Your friend is hot. I want to have sex with her, but I don’t want to make too much of an effort. Also, will she either let me watch football whenever I want or watch it with me (quietly)? Does she like giving blow jobs? Will she pretend that she finds it endearing when I hit on other women? Will she be willing to only spend time with me when I want her to, like because I want to have sex or I need a +1 to a wedding?

So you see, by the young male definition of “cool”, the answer is clearly “no”...a girl who is physically attractive and hates herself that much will not be single for long. But by the female definition, there are tons of single girls who are both hot and cool. In fact, I can name at least four close single friends between 28 and 35 off the top of my head who are physically stunning, professionally successful and really easy for both men and women to get along with. None of them would be described by even their ex-boyfriends as being “crazy” or “high maintenance” or any of the other words that get slapped on single women.

You see, there is a whole other part of the equation here...the women would have to not want to be single. The very nature of the question shows that you acknowledge these women as being particularly desirable, and women who are really that desirable are likely going to be pretty picky...they get hit on a lot and they are aware that they have a lot of options if they want to date someone. Their standards in men are going to be equally high, and the portion of the dating pool that they would be willing to entertain will be, by definition, pretty small.

Let’s solve this mathematically.

S (Singleness) = the likelihood that a woman is single.

D (Desirability) = the likelihood of any given man wanting to date her (which is in itself a function of her attractiveness, coolness and other factors).

I (Interest) = the likelihood that the woman would want to date any given man.

X = Luck Variable

S = ((D+I) / 2) * X

My friend Erin (31), for example, is a remarkably dateable girl. She’s gorgeous, she’s approachable and really friendly and outgoing, she’s a runner and skier and soccer player...she’s a girly-girl, but she is pretty easy for men to relate to. She also has a couple of degrees, a relatively important job and makes more money that you probably do. By any measure, she has her shit together and a high portion of eligible men would be interested in dating Erin.

But Erin doesn’t want to date someone just for the sake of dating someone. She’s very busy - works a lot, volunteers on the board of a food pantry, plays soccer - and she has a lot friends with whom she already spends her free time. She’s not going to carve out a big chunk of her attention for some random guy who buys her a drink.

Even if her brilliant and gorgeous friend Alex meets a handsome and charming guy at a fundraiser and gives him Erin’s number (which Alex has been deputized to do), Erin will gladly meet said person but isn’t going to automatically grant a second date if she doesn’t feel like it. He has to bring something to the table that makes it worthwhile for her to make a place for him in her life.

So, her D score is really high, but her I score is quite low. There are no shortage of men who want to be around her, but it takes a pretty special guy to register on her radar. That’s diminishing her S score, a state of affairs that doesn’t really bother her all that much.

Hopefully, this easy-to-follow equation has explained why there are indeed women who are hot, cool and single.

I’d like to point out that I intended to end this column with “Of course you can get all three...have you met so-and-so?” but I couldn’t find even one girl who was willing to be my example! The most common objection? It was likely to invite a flood of creepers immediately afterwards!!! So, maybe we have established the real reason that there will always be single, hot, cool women...because men are really fucking weird!!!