13.11.06 motorhead!

This was a mostly typical weekend here…

 Friday: went to happy hour at the school, hung out with stressed MBAs and got loaded, went out for dinner and more drinks, came home and sacked out.  The big difference this weekend was that Reba’s cousin Jeff and his girl Jennifer were staying with us, so they came along too. 

Saturday: got up to the boathouse at 10 to 8 AM but then we got booted from our rowing slot (again) and had to settle for ergonomic machines. WEAK.  Our coach Tom (really great guy) tried to get us to run up to the gym after getting booted from our slot, and the non undergraduate contingent on the team (us old guys) decided that was BULLSHIT, and walked.  Had breakfast with Barry, tried unsuccessfully to study and then equally unsuccessfully to take a nap, then met with the NBD dudes for our kickoff.  The NBD is our New Business Development project, which is a fancy way of saying the “write a business plan” project.  We are going to make a line of gluten-free beer for celiacs.  This is a bit odd, but it will be fun because we’ll get to go to breweries, try a lot of beer, and learn about the brewing process, etc., while making a business plan.  Plus, it’s about 500,000,000 times more exciting than “some gay dotcom idea”, which I’ve had more than enough of in my life up to now.  After this, the dudes went out to dinner, had more beers, and then went home.  Chilly chill.

Sunday: Reba made breakfast for me, Jeff, Jen, and Shelby (we have adopted Shelby) which was lots of fun.  Then, Reba walked Jeff and Jen to the bus station (they’re off to Paris today) while I studied finance, which almost made sense after about 4 hours.  CAPM and WACC baby.  The next bit was the TRUE highlight of the weekend… Reba and I went to see Motorhead!! 

 

the classic logo

 

Lemmy Kilmister: Mr. Motorhead,

in his world famous singing pose

 

yes, he is SUPER ugly and that

is a wart on his face

 

YAHOOOO!!!!!!  They were awesome, and totally fun to watch.  I should point out once again how cool my wife is: she actually likes Motorhead.  And really prefers the fast songs.  How did I ever get so lucky?  Anyway, we sat in the back of a small theater in Oxford, and watched one of the alltime great heavy metal bands do it’s thing.  Lemme is about 60, and appears to have been drinking and smoking pretty hardcore for at least 58 of those years, although he never has gotten fat, for whatever reason.  The rest of the band look bad as well, but more on the pudgy/gray and less on the pickled/livingdead side of things.  They play fast hard and loud, and have their own sort of sloppy groovy they get into which works, but certainly isn’t very tight.  Lemmy screwed up the bass intro to the song “Ace of Spades”, which is their signature tune.  This exact same thing happened the last time I saw them as well… it’s not clear if he does it on purpose, or if the distortion is just too over the top for me to be able to pick out what’s going on, or if he doesn’t care, or what.  No one in audience cares about this anyway, Motorhead still ROCK.  Their set and onstage comments were just about the same as when I saw them in Seattle 2 years ago, and they were certainly very fucking loud (as they should be, they were once in the Guiness book of world records as the loudest band on earth) but one thing was really different here: the crowd.  First of all, there were no pat downs at the door, and no restrictions against re-entry.  Further, the age range was HUGE: lots of people in their 40s and certainly some in their 50s…

Brief sidebar: we went to the bar “The Gloucester Arms” for a pint while we waited out the crappy opening band, this turned out to be a very good idea.  First of all, the GA is a “heavy metal” bar in downtown Oxford, complete with all-metal jukebox, metal band posters on the walls, goofy metal dudes, and slutty looking chubby metal chicks, all wearing black tshirts with some metal band’s name on them.  Except for tonight, where the whole scene was repeated, except everyone was wearing Motorhead tshirts.    We ended up talking to a couple of bald, portly, Motorhead tshrit sporting 50 somethings who were also going to the show, and apparently had the same pint-and-wait-out-the-crappy-opening-band idea we had.  They were nice enough guys, if a bit unintelligible accent-wise, but the kicker was this: as one of them left, he put on his coat, turned to us with a resigned look, flashed the metal sign, and said, “Right. Well, rock on then.”, turned, and exited the bar.  PRICELESS PRICELESS PRICELESS.  Back to the story…

…as well as young people all the way down to some 10 year olds with their mom sitting behind us!  One of the kids sitting behind us was totally cute, he kept yelling “you rock!”, and “yeah, metal!” at the band, and there were quite a few other parent and kid combos there tonight as well.  This show vibe was entirely friendly and fun, and people were clearly just there to have a good time and watch a favorite band.  There were no fights, and really no seriously scary people, just a few old semi-rough looking bikers here and there and a scantily dressed fat chick who was intent on head banging and sexy dancing while turned around facing toward the crowd (funny exhibitionist fat chick).  The security was non existent, but so was the hostility, and people honestly behaved very well.  This experience contrasts with the show we attended in Seattle a few years back: that really was a whole other deal.  That show was made up of drunk skinheads, crusty punks, weird-beard sketchy white trash metal dudes from the way-out suburbs (probably on meth), as well as a sprinkling of those sarcastic hipster types (naming no names).  The vibe at the Seattle show was hostile and negative, with a tone indicating that violence could break out at any time.  And it did.  At the door, the pat down searches were in full effect, and the security goons (and they were total goons) were taking peoples’ spiked belts, ripping chains off of chain wallets, confiscating banned items, etc.  I guess that seeing Motorhead over here is something like seeing Grand Funk Railroad back home: yeah it’s loud rock and roll, but nobodys getting their head kicked in over it.  In Seattle, and maybe in the US in general(?), Motorhead seem to represent something a little darker, a little more burn-out, and certainly more ready to cross over into the violent sphere.  Of course, then again, maybe that was because they were playing with the Dwarves?  I dunno, all I can say is that it was a hoot, and I got a cool new tshirt and hat, as well as a break from the books.  I came back and memorised 16 (“capital employed” isn’t a formula, really) accounting ratio formulae, and now I’m finishing up my night with a post.  Back to the shizz!

 

net profit margin = pbit / turnover

gross profit margin = gross profit / turnover

avg settlement time for debtors = avg trade debtors / credit sales

avg settlement time for creditors = avg trade creditors / credit purchases

sales per employee = turnover / employee

sales to capital employed = turnover / capital employed 

gearing ratio = avg long term liabilities / avg capital employed

return on capital employed = pbit / capital employed

average stock turnover period = avg stock held / cost of sales x 365

current ratio = current assets / current liabilites

actid test ratio = current assets – stocks / current liabilites

gearing ratio = longterm liabilities / capital employed

interest cover = pbit / interest payable

dividend payout ratio = dividends announced for payout / earnings available for dividends

earnings per share = pait / total shares

P/E ratio = market value per share / earnings per share

…and capital employed = long term liabilities + share capital + reserves