Welcome to Hack Mule Notebook #4!
I have a few new features for you this week, including more tales from the Leviathan in “Elevator Follies,” a Hack Mule playlist in Apple Music, and a special Conspiracy Theory feature.
Let me know what you think—and what else you’d like to see. I value your comments and truly appreciate your support. (Please hit the comment button below.)
Enjoy the Notebook and have a great week!
Kristen
Overheard:
A man conducting a Zoom call in public—without headphones—apologized to his colleagues for the background noise, complaining bitterly, “People are so rude in public!”
— at Java Nation, Garrett Park
Elevator Follies:
I sometimes think I could have a vibrant social life if I did nothing more than ride the elevator here at the Leviathan (the overpriced high-rise where I definitely don’t live). In the space of a minute or two on the elevator, people are expansive—much more so than in larger rooms.
Take last weekend. I got on the elevator in the garage. Jon and Ethan were already on.
Before saying hello, Jon told me his beach neighbor’s basement had flooded
“That’s a huge problem, because, you know, you just can’t ever get basements near the water dry,” Jon said.
“Why did they build one?” I asked.
“Good question,” he said. He shuffled off on the A level, looking grim.
Ethan saw an opening. “I bought glue! I went to three different places, but I finally found it at Home Depot. Wasn’t that lucky?”
As I contemplated whether finding glue at Home Depot actually rises to the level of “luck,” he filled me in on the bathroom project that requires it.
Sharon got on in the lobby.
“Good morning. If it is a good morning,” she said.
“It’s a very lucky day!” I said. “Ethan found glue.”
This didn’t interest her at all, so she started her own topic: Bob no longer has the flu. It’s been a long, uncomfortable few weeks for her, because she’s recovering from knee replacement—so she must avoid viruses—and Bob brought this virus into her life.
“I did not take care of him! He was told not to bring in viruses,” she said.
“I see.”
“But he did,” she said. “Never a thought for me.”
“Fuck Bob,” I said.
“Yes, exactly! Fuck Bob!” she said. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking all week.”
The doors opened on my floor. “Take care, Sharon.”
“You, too, sweetie! Take care! Fuck Bob!”
Listening:
Over the past year or two, I’ve gotten in the habit of asking my Apple Watch, “What song is this?” Siri automatically identifies the song and adds it to a playlist. Sometimes I even ask it to identify songs I know perfectly well, just so I can remind myself to listen to them again or remember what I was thinking in the moment I heard them.
The other day, I realized that this is creating a random, slightly chaotic—and sometimes hilariously on point—look at my week. In case you want to listen along with me, I created a Hack Mule playlist on Apple Music.
Here’s what I heard this week:
“Sunny Afternoon,” The Kinks—driving down River Road in the pouring rain, Potomac
“Layla,” Derek and the Dominos—St. Jane de Chantal parking lot, Bethesda
“This Girl,” Kungs & Cookin’ On 3 Burners—walking past a kid smoking pot outside Chipotle, Georgetown Square
“Summer Breeze,” The Isley Brothers—while buying socks at Target, Rockville
“All I Do,” Stevie Wonder—going through the carwash, Rockville
“Look Sharp!” Joe Jackson—at the meat counter, Safeway, Fallsgrove
“The Passenger,” Siouxsie and the Banshees—elevator at the dentist, White Flint
“Don’t Knock My Love,” Wilson Pickett—Woodside Deli, Germantown
“Situation,” Johnny Blue Skies—at the vehicle emissions inspection station, Derwood
“My Favorite Things,” John Coltrane—on the Outer Loop near Wisconsin Avenue
Watching:
We’re now three episodes into Season 4 of Ted Lasso, and it’s…fine. Perfectly adequate.
That may sound slightly more lukewarm than I intend, so here’s more:
The main thing I’ve noticed is that it looks and sounds different. It reminded me of the blown-out look and slightly hollow sound that TV shows get when they come back as films. It doesn’t feel like Ted Lasso—somehow it’s less intimate, glossier, just a little off.
The plot is evolving. The first three episodes have all been about re-setting the table, getting the characters up to the present, and introducing the new premise of Ted coaching a women’s soccer team.
Episode Three seemed to pick up a little steam, so I’m more hopeful now than I was a week ago.
I’m rooting for them.
Milestones:
With the 29th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death coming up next week, Charles Spencer, brother of the deceased, announced that he will be releasing a new memoir about his sister.
I wondered what prompted this. A 29th anniversary isn’t especially significant, and the public hasn’t been clamoring for Diana retrospectives. No one really even talks about her anymore.
Then I realized: that’s exactly why he’s putting the book out now. Some 40 percent of Britons were not even alive when Diana died. Half were under 10 or not yet born. Living memory is dwindling fast.
And legends fade quickly.
I recall watching voir dire for the William Kennedy Smith trial in 1991. I remember them asking the jury pool if they were familiar with John F. Kennedy.
The prospective jurors looked puzzled. One said, “Is that the President Kennedy guy?” Another asked, “I heard about a Teddy Kennedy—is that him?” A third seemed to remember flying out of Kennedy airport in New York.
My first thought on hearing them was, “Morons. Glad they’re not a jury of my peers.”
My second thought was to realize how fleeting fame is, even for someone as prominent as John F. Kennedy. That trial was 28 years after his death. His widow and children were still alive. Several of his relatives were still serving in public office. But the president was barely legible anymore.
So, maybe that’s what Charles Spencer is thinking. Or, maybe he’s conspiring with his nephew. (See next.)
Transitions:
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced this week that they’re returning to the UK. The House of Windsor’s John and Yoko offered no insights about their possible career plans, although Netflix quickly quashed a rumor that Meghan would star in the next season of The Gentlemen.
🫏 Hack Mule Take: Instant Karma’s gonna get them.
Nerd News:
Walmart, one of the last holdouts on accepting contactless payments at its cash registers, announced last week that it will take Apple Pay, Google Pay, and the rest starting tomorrow.
It’s wildly exciting. I can’t wait to find out what Walmart sells.
Lexicon:
Preport. A colleague sent me a note last week saying, “I’m making up the agenda for our meeting next week. Karen is going to give a report on the data-center stuff. Could you give a preport so we can understand what she’s talking about?”
A “preport.” The report that comes before the report so the audience can understand the report.
“Sure.”
Then I spent the next 22 minutes contemplating whether I was actually giving a preport or just a “port,” since Karen was the one who would be “porting again.”
Conspiracy Theories:
The Vatican was responsible for Watergate. (Hear me out…)
I love conspiracy theories. I don’t generally believe them, but the process of linking facts in portentous ways cracks me up. They’re the broken Tinkertoys of intellectual discourse.
This week I’d like to introduce you to the Watergate.
Yes, that Watergate.
But I’m not thinking about the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon—I want to talk about the complex itself.
Guess who owned part of the company that built it. The Vatican.
Yes, that Vatican.
Let me back up. In 1929, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with Pope Pius XI, making the Vatican a sovereign city-state and dumping piles of money on the Holy See.
Flush with cash, Pius and his successors invested widely, including taking a huge stake in an Italian real estate company called Società Generale Immobiliare (SGI).
Flash forward to 1961: The first Catholic president is in the White House, and the Vatican-backed SGI rolls into Washington with big plans to convert a tract along the Potomac in Foggy Bottom into a business-hotel-residential complex called the Watergate.
As the project was in the federal city, which did not have home rule, it fell to the Kennedy White House to approve the plan. The locals were not thrilled. Neither were the Protestants, who formed activist groups that tried to block the Watergate on the basis of the separation of church and state, suggesting that the White House bowed to pressure from the Vatican, which wanted to “occupy” the capital.
The Protestants lost, Kennedy was assassinated, and SGI was looking for occupants for the Watergate.
In 1966, perhaps recalling the support of the Kennedy administration, SGI reached out to the Democratic National Committee, offering them office space in the new complex for a fraction of what they were paying on K Street. The Democrats moved into the building in June 1967.
By 1969, things weren’t going so well for the Vatican or the DNC. The Vatican was plagued with charges of corruption over its commercial holdings. Meanwhile, Democrat Hubert Humphrey lost to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1968 election, leaving the DNC with a pile of campaign debt.
In late 1969, Pope Paul VI started holding secret nocturnal meetings with Sicilian banker and Mafia lawyer Michele Sindona to unload the Church’s holdings in SGI. According to Time, Sindona acquired a 15 percent interest in the company through the Vatican.
That’s right around the time the DNC stopped paying its rent. Word came down from SGI and Sindona not to evict the Democrats, just in case…
Funny thing happened on June 17, 1972—Nixon operatives broke into the DNC’s offices, starting the Watergate scandal.
And a funny coda: On July 18, 1973, the DNC sent SGI $2,500—pennies on the dollar of the rent it owed. The very same day, Nixon ordered aides to disconnect the White House taping system.
And that’s why I love conspiracy theories.