Rose Byrne in ‘Damages’

Not everything will be about economics. Writing is writing is writing. So i might as well write about my fascination with Rose Byrne.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been following the career of an Australian actress named Rose Byrne. Being in California allows me to indulge in my fandom. I’ll be writing about the Rose Byrne ‘canon’ over the next couple of weeks. I expected blind devotion to this actress, however, in the cold light of day her movies contain as many misses as hits. Still, in all the movies of hers I’ve seen so far, her talent has been able to save the day, and sometimes the picture.

But that’s the movies, and this time — the first time I’m writing about her — it will be about the TV legal serial “Damages” on FX [the cable version of Fox]. A short detour about her career. In the US, Rose is an unknown. She almost became famous three years ago in the heels of twin American movie “Troy”, where she famously shared the screen with Brad Pitt. Until now, two years hence, whenever she gets interviewed, she still gets asked about kissing Brad Pitt. I can’t imagine how sick of it she must be.

After Troy, a lot of people (probably Rose herself) got really excited about her career. Unfortunately, the buzz fizzled, stardom stalled. She ended up working on several movies, the most recent are the sci-fi flicks “28 Weeks Later” and “Sunshine”. If you haven’t heard of these movies, don’t blame yourself – the marketing behind these movies are small, the box office returns are similar.

So, with a movie career that’s low on wattage (but a few great parts nonetheless!), how can someone like Rose become famous? Take the back alley, TV. In ‘Damages’, she takes on the role of ambitious and brilliant law school grad Ellen Parsons, and is second billing to high stakes litigator Patty Hughes (movie great Glenn Close).

Well, that’s what we’re repeatedly told in the pilot, i.e. 1) that she’s bright and ambitious and like her mentor and boss Patty, and 2) Patty is a bad-ass torts lawyer who will ‘own you’. They spend a lot of time with number 2, and I’m convinced. Watching the Glenn Close is character is delicious fun. Its no secret that its so much more fun to play and write for a morally ambiguous character. She has all the best lines, and drops witticisms and craven advice like she has a lifetime supply in her basement. Her knowledge borders on the ominiscient. She is the God in this little universe, and everyone she shares the screen must be put in their place.

Including her new would-be protégé Ellen. Of course, this shouldn’t be the case for the whole of the series, for the sake of the show and for Rose Byrne’s career. To be an interesting challenge to Patty, Ellen must be every bit as ambitious and intelligent as everyone around her claims. So far, none of this purported brillance is in evidence. Her aha! moment of stumbling onto Patty’s plan is largely unexplained – it seemed that as she was explaining it to her onscreen boyfriend, she was trying to convince herself of it too! In a critical scene as Patty was talking about her familiy, Ellen’s replies were borderline inane: Patty was telling her about her problems with her son, Ellen says “I’m sure you are (a good parent)”. Huh?

One can only hope that this will change starting episode 2. From the reviews available on the web, i am optimistic. Currently the other strong character in this show is Ted Dansons’ Arthur Frobisher, a business tycoon. Both Frobisher and Hughes seem to be locked in a conflict larger than the legal battle about to ensue. But the key relationship here must be between Ellen and Patty, and right now Ellen is not holding up her end of the deal. I like one line, where Patty says: “You know what I like about you? There’s always something going on… you don’t fall for bullshit”. Perhaps, I can’t wait until Ellen finally steps to the plate.

The central legal conflict in the show is between Patty and Frobisher, a billionaire accused of insider trading. This ripped-off-the-headlines case isn’t the sexiest of McGuffin’s, which is probably why they led the show with a bloody, half-naked Rose Byrne stumbling through New York at 7am. Indeed, the preview of the future episodes suggests that insider trading may be the least of the crimes in this legal serial, which may include murder, extortion and other goodies. By the end of its 13 episode first season, the link between why Ellen was found in such a disheveled state, the Frobisher trial, and the depths of Patty Hughes depravity will be revealed.

Below: Close and Byrne in Damages Press Conference, a screenshot from the show

The Point of this Blog

The reason i started this blog is to force myself to write. Writing forces one to clarify one’s thoughts, to make an argument sharp, clear as crystal. If i can’t describe a paper’s main point/intuition in the space of one short bond paper, then i really don’t understand it yet. Writing, as some of you may know, if the lifesblood of a career academician/researcher.

Eventually i will write a dissertation (at the very least!). Scaling every mountain requires a first, tentative step. So writing journal articles starts with writing smaller articles. So, i’m committing myself to writing at least two blog entries a week.

As part of my third year requirements, i’m supposed to submit a literature review on any topic i want to write about. Right now, i’m interested in pursuing the heterogeous firm literature in international trade. This means, i’ll be writing alot about trade in the near future, both on the empirical side and the theory.

For IO, i’m interested in Natural Resources, Energy and Marketing. There is an August 2006 JPE paper i’m currently reading on the dynamic pricing of experience goods. I’ll write about that soon as i understand the math. i might do a literature review on these topics too.

Other things related to economics i’ll be writing about. I’m also working through Obstfeld and Rogoff’s “Foundations of International Macroeconomics”, the bible of the field. I don’t think i can claim to trully know international economics without knowing the macro part!

In addition to the reading and writing, i’m also poised to (really) learn mathematica and matlab. For IO and International Trade, i need to understand simulation because data (especially for the research frontier topics) are typically not easily available. I’ll be blogging about data too — to construct a new theoretical approach, one must understand empirics.

So, for the non-econ who read my blog, feel free to tune out. However, comments on style and language are always helpful. There’s alot of bad writing out there in economics; I don’t feel the need to contribute to that.

Harry Potter Madness

Last Night was the official launch of Harry Potter part 7. I wanted to see this historical event myself, so i went to the local Davis Borders. I’ve never seen so many people hot and bothered about a book! But it was all organized, if a tad slow. I’ll post my pictures to this post as soon as i can upload them to my computer.

Trade Post-Mortem

Post-mortem indeed! i didn’t know what happened to me but i completely blanked on so many questions. The problem with the trade classes is that there is so much to memorize that when it performance time came, i choked.

260A:
the first question i wasted an hour on and yet i didn’t find the correct answer. partial points tho. Since i spent all that time on this question, my organization here was the cleanest.

the second is the only question i got through with any bit of confidence, however, it took me forever to come up with the maximization problem, so most of my answers were short and stilted coz i had to attack the others

260E
i totally felt dumb here, not really because the questions were out of this world, but because i hadn’t prepared the correct way. a little voice inside me told me that i had to practice with analytical solutions, but i didn’t listen. arghhh… i should always listen to my intuition — or at least argue with it. too bad, had i prepared correctly, i could have answered it better.

260C
here, i totally blanked. there was a basic question on MNCs and spillovers, a ‘tell me all you know about this topic’. so i skipped this mentally. big mistake. the other question i thought i could do was the more theory oriented outsourcing question. again big mistake. i didn’t know 2 of the 4 subquestions. this was a bad situation. i decided to answer the outsourcing because at least i could make up an answer that sort of made sense, something that you can’t do for the empirical work.

bottomline, i mis-prepared for this exam. i should have gone for more depth in 260E, focused on the detail of only the core models of 260A, and been smarter about 260c.

i underestimated this exam. i almost wish i’d have to retake because i know trade, and this test is not a reflection of what i know. but i let my guard down, so i blanked. after years of test taking experience, i should have known better.

Colma: The Musical

I saw this review on the nytimes.com, which led me to their website.

As a fan of musicals, i’m excited. Its got a heavy filipino presence too! Hopefully, its still in San Francisco next week, when i’m free to see it.

A question on Feminism

I was drawn to this article/letter on www.inquirer.net. It raises several points, but this one in particular seemed interesting to me:

For example, Regine Velasquez proclaims that she is willing to give up her career to be with Ogie Alcasid. Why does having a relationship, or marriage, or family make some women give up their hard-earned career? Regine truly disappoints in this regard, especially because she is a far more successful artist than Ogie Alcasid.

It’s a real shame, this mentality that it’s admirable for a woman to turn her back on a career … for a man.

My question is, why not? Isn’t the whole point of progress that feminism is espousing is the equality of opportunity available to men and women. Women now are free to have a career; hence we observe women doing all sorts of things.

But if one is free to have a career, then isn’t one free to NOT have one? No one is forcing her to give up her career for Ogie, but if she wants to, isn’t this something we should be celebrating? I’m sure she’s aware of the fact that she doesn’t have to give anything up if she trully doesn’t want to.

Also, she mentioned that earning power and success should be part of the decision making calculus. As an economist-wannabe, i should be happy that it seems that Ms. Salonga (related to Lea?) is cognisant of the power of opportunity costs. If i may be allowed to restate her argument in more prosaic language — since regine is comparatively more productive in showbusiness than ogie, she should specialize in showbusiness and he should do — i don’t know, Ms Salonga declines to say what ogie is relatively good at. In this way, total production is maximized and the outcome is efficient.

This is one of the most powerful contributions (if not THE most powerful) economics has given the world, but in this particular application, i have quibbles.

In the standard case of two goods in production, thats fine. But here, we have to trade off among multiple dimensions, and in terms of personal satisfaction. Perhaps being a wife and mother gives a woman happiness (i can only guess of course, being neither a wife nor mother), and if the marginal benefit of being a wife/mother is higher for her, then she should rationally substitute into this, and out of showbiz.

Translated to normal english: if she feels that being a mother full time makes her happy, why insist that she become some kind of feminist icon? Let her do what she wants.

Mr Normal

Your Score: Joe Normal

47 % Nerd, 21% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.



This is not to say that you don’t have some Nerd, Geek or Dork inside of you–we all do, and you can see the percentages you have right above. This is just to say that none of those qualities stand out so much as to define you. Sure, you enjoy an episode of Star Trek now and again, and yeah, you kinda enjoyed a few classes back in the day. And, once in a while, you stumble while walking down the street even though there was nothing there to cause you to trip. But, for the most part, you look and act fairly typically, and aren’t much of an outcast.



I’d say there’s a fair chance someone asked you to take this test. In any event, fairly normal.



Congratulations!



If you enjoyed this test, I would love the feedback!




Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you’re interested in any of the following:



Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Professional Wrestling

America/Politics

Thanks Again! — THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

IO prelim post-mortem

Just finished the IO prelim. Some thoughts:

a) I wanted to answer two theory questions from the start, but when i saw a scary looking question on incentive contracts and quantity competition, i shied away. i came back to it realizing that its probably easier than i feared, and that i couldn’t answer the other two questions. i lucked out. thanks, bonano for not making it too hard

Finished the two theory questions in an hour and a half, half an hour was all about convincing myself that i remembered how to solve a profit max and a revenue max contract, and a two -stage backward induction game. hhmmm, now that i’m writing this, i doesn’t sound hard at all…

b) For 221b, i took on the differentiated goods estimation question, bascially, amped up multinomial logits. i decided not to take on the NEIO question, ironic cause my research proposal was about NEIO. I was scared when it said, ‘now without marginal cost data…” ow, sh_t.

c) For 221c, its strange when the criterion you are following is which answer will suck least. my knowledge of auctions is weak at best. The last sub question talked about the proof for winners curse in a common value auction. Really easy, but i couldn’t remember one key step in the proof. So i went to the question on incentives in the mutual fund industry (a couple of papers by Chevalier and Ellison). I had blah answers, but at least i could answer all of them with answers that are at least in part intelligent.

one down, trade to go.