For Thursday, April 15, 1999 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 727 words

Heckle and Jive

Unlike one of my other columns, this one is about me.

I've been reviewing myself lately, analyzing myself. I didn't have much else to do. Bad weather put the kibosh on my camping plans, and I also got sick -- shivers and such -- so I spent the holiday week in bed.

Actually, something else came before the self inspection. I got bit again by Clarence, my nine-foot tall, heavy-breathing, grinning, whip-wielding obsession bug.

When Clarence comes to town, my wife leaves, or at least makes room for him. When he visits, it's never for the weekend. Clarence usually stays for months, consuming all my free time.

Dragging my ill self to a bookstore and a movie early last week, I happened on a book about the stock market. It was written by the Motley Fool brothers at fool.com.

Funny thing, I've walked by this section of the store many times before without pause. This time, however, I felt a large chomp on the back of my head, turned around, and there stood Clarence.

"Buy it," he said, "and I'll read it to you."

Just about then, my wife came around the corner. She took one look at my face and said, "Oh, God… Hello, Clarence. I know you're around here somewhere. What is it this time, Steve? Swedish joke books? Bonsai trees? Dostoyevski? Masks?"

"Nope," I said. "The stock market."

She pulled back her head. Instead of herding me to the cashier before I bought more books, she took pause and said, "Hmm, perhaps you've finally obsessed on something that can turn us some real money. That would be a nice change." With that, she picked up a book by Charles Schwab, and off we strolled, the three of us, laughing all the way to the auto-teller.

We read the books. I clocked 100 hours on the Internet exploring investment advice and company financial reports. I started playing the game at E-Trade that gives people $100,000 in funny money. By Friday we were sitting in the offices of Charles Schwab in Walnut Creek filling out membership forms and cutting Chuck a check.

So, now I've got four potential stories going -- one about self reflection, one about Clarence and the books, one about the stocks I bought, and lastly, what movie did we see?

Can they come together? That's the test.

By Saturday, I'd perceived a great irony within. By nature, I'm an artsy guy. I am not a mathematician, by nature. I think in abstractions, in metaphors, in poetic terms. I'm a lover of classic and comic literature, surrealism, freaky music, and all things soft and nebulous. I prefer gray areas and loose traditions.

Yet, several of my biggest obsessions, the ones that have consumed years of my adult life, have come from the exacting sciences. My greatest obsessions are these: card counting, computers, and now stocks.

Why? Why me? Why don't I obsess over oil painting and poetry like when I was young? What draws me to these hard sciences that go against my nature? Why am I pulled hither from yon? I ask Clarence and he just nods. I ask Susan and she gives me a smooch.

When school started Monday, Clarence didn't leave, but he did move his belongings down to the basement so I could concentrate on my classes. His brave advice to me, concerning the present Internet Gold Rush stock market, was this: "Picks and shovels, mules and whiskey."

I bought stock in these two companies: Qwest and Fed Ex. Qwest provides a gargantuan amount of cross-country fibre-optic cable and Fed Ex delivers a lot of those ever-increasing Internet purchases. Most of the Internet stocks are already too heavily mined for my plebeian blood.

Besides, my obsessions have never been about making money. When I studied blackjack, I never did it as a gambler. I did it academically. I was fascinated by the logic. Today, I seldom play over $5 a hand, but I can count halves against the fastest dealer. I've been studying computers and software development since before hard drives, out of curiosity, but I've never made a dime on what I've learned beyond a yearly mentorship and one fine inservice at the Fremont schools.

I told this part to Susan, my co-analyst, and she said, "Honey, that's all about to change. Isn't it, Clarence?"

Life is Beautiful.