Blackstone's Buying This Blog!

Why not? They're buying everything else. Just bought Hilton Hotels. Already own tons of real estate. Sold a stake in itself to China!!! This could be a good investment. Low risk, no debt, lots of growth opportunities.

Seriously, am I the only one concerned about the surge of private equity gobbling up everything in sight? I'm not even sure why I care but I just have hunch that in about five years there will be a huge mess of problems stemming from all this. Plus it just seems to me there should be a limit as to how much one group can own even if its holdings are incredibly diverse.

OK, I'm not going to go on about this, mainly because I haven't done enough homework to make any compelling arguments other than something smells here and in few years we will all be paying for this.

Otherwise, a pretty mellow July 4 for your host. I took a long run in Central Park. I ran all the way around the park, first time I'd done that since May and first time ever solo. Went to the gym and then looked for black jeans. Like shorts, the right pair of black jeans is not easy to find. Some are too shiny and dark and others are too faded. As usual, the type I own and like don't seem to be in production anymore. That is the story of my life. I find a shirt or shoes or pants that fit the way I want and look the way I want and they immediately cease production. I realize this may also say something about my fashion sense, but I don't care about that.

Pigged out today. Get ready for this. I had a low-fat muffin, two slices of pizza, a bacon cheeseburger with fries, cup of lentil soup and a couple of plums and peaches. Now if you run six or seven miles in the morning then workout, I guess your body will demand food. I can't complain. I've quit smoking (well, almost six months anyway) and I think I've actually lost weight. I've cut out potato chips. I eat salads several days a week and lots of yogurt. I exercise a lot. I do all this so I can have the occasional day like today when I eat a lot of grease and cheese.

I realize hearing about my diet and hearing me pretend to know something about private equity and high finance is not the most exciting thing in the world but if not that then you'll hear how I took care of my personal needs three times today (that might also explain the appetite), watched the Yankees lose, did a load of laundry (I'm OCD when it comes to laundry) and now are watching the Tigers struggle to keep a lead over Cleveland. So we can take a poll about the pole and what people want to hear about. I could make shit up, but everyone does that and sooner or later I'll start spewing stories of some of my wilder times and you'll think I'm making it up anyway.

Back to Detroit. Tonight's game is in Detroit and it always freaks me about how light it stays there until 10 p.m. That didn't really happen when I lived there because if my memory serves we didn't start doing daylight savings time until after we moved to Jersey. I was in Detroit last summer for a family reunion and it was a little odd how late it stayed light. I'd be going to bed a half hour after the sun went down if I lived there now. When I was there, I went to see my old house. I actually lived in Detroit. We were one of the last white families there and that was 1973! Our house still looked the same and the neighborhood looked about the same but there was a different feel to it. I definitely looked and felt out of place which was odd considering that I once walked up and down those streets without a care in the world.

Next week ESPN premieres "The Bronx is Burning" about the 77 Yankees and all the craziness that was going on in NYC that year. I was living in Jersey then and remember it well so I'll be sure to babble about all that is wrong with the series. Hopefully it'll be better than "Summer of Sam," the bad Spike Lee movie that got punk rock wrong (kids at CBGBs in 1977 did not have mohawks and dyed hair, they looked like the Ramones). The mohawks and other crap didn't really come stateside until the early 80s. I know, I had two brothers who spent that summer at CBs all the time watching the Ramones, Dictators, Shirts, Tuff Darts, Blondie, etc. I grew up listening to my brother blast "Two Tub Man" and "Beat on the Brat."

I'll get into all that stuff--Detroit, Jersey, D.C.--at some point but for now I'm going to watch some more of this game. I now realize I've goofed off at work for the last week or so and it's time to get busy again. OK, here come the thunderstorms.