WSG Boss Profiles

1. Ned Competant - The Clueless One: Likes all the really basic stocks, not too risky or adventurous. Started off investing in Apple and Coca Cola, but later on in the game when he won't make too much revenue from it. Lowest level sector boss, only acquire middling options from his defeat. More of a tutorial thing.

2. Amet Gala - The Party Boy – Chummy, but only because people are paid to laugh at his jokes. He's a fan of vice, and has invested in as many boozing, carousing, fun spirited stocks as possible. Early supporter of Virgin and likes to think he's a close personal friend of Richard Branson (who thinks that he's a bit of a wank, he candidly admits).

3. Esther Menshel - The Schmoozer – She knows that networking is key. She'll bend over backwards to make sure you're comfortable as long as it'll net her a profit. She likes to invest in a handful of retail and tech (especially the phone market; she's always chatting), consumer goods, as well as some healthcare to show her philanthropic side.

4. William Chumbly - The Braggart – Braggart works hard on his portfolio and harder on his physique; A bit of a harmless Patrick Bateman. He's a classic investor, mostly to give him some bragging rights at the gentleman's investment club. He's always on his blue-tooth, trying to one-up anybody who needs to contact him. He likes light financial, basic materials, and industrial stocks, trying to feel included in the old boys club of speculation.

5. Edward Verm - The Conservative One – A pencil necked paper pusher, the conservative one got where he is today by keeping his head down and his nose to the grindstone. A proponent of hard work and scrupulous investing, he only invests in inelastic commodities. Financial stocks, industrial stocks, and basic materials are what he's after. Mr. Conservative doesn't let his money go to the fickle interests of the Vulgate. He is also terrified of confrontation and does his best to stay out of the way.

6. Mildred Grisley - The Matriarch – She's won every drinking contest at the boy's club. She'll fire you crassly just to prove a point. She's had to struggle her way to the top, and do it in heels, and she's not going anywhere anytime soon. Despite her caustic persona, she's a huge investor in healthcare having wanted to go into nursing before being told it was “a girl's job”. Or maybe because of all the people she's put in traction. Other interests of hers involve consumer goods, and some ETF's for good measure.

7. Robert Baron - The Right Hand Man – A staunch defender of the main baddy and a significant part of his legal council, the right hand man is a shrewd investor with all the right instincts. He's maintained a very diverse portfolio, although prefers to focus on stocks that don't have to do with people. ETF's, financials, industrial goods, high level tech, and basic materials are his milieu. Unlike the conservative one, the right hand man loves confrontation and has been known to hire people just to have an impulse firing pool.

8. Vincent Grabbal - The Boss Man – Bordering on Mafia Don, this CEO does any and everything in his power to ensure his success. He's managed to rally the other big investors around his general causes, and if they show a hint of doubt, they risk being cut off. Boss Man has a fully diversified portfolio, sampling high yield stocks of every variety, but focusing on large scale financial sectors most acutely.   

Amet Gala Boss Cinematic

INT – NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT

AMET GALA is standing with his supermodel secretary by his side amidst his crowd of yes men who are belly laughing deeply.

AMET 

[continuing]... and so I say to her, 'What happened to you this morning, a hostile makeover?!

AMET is suddenly aware of PLAYER's presence.

AMET 

Hey guys, look who it is! How 'bout a drink [PLAYER]? Had anything besides prison wine lately? Make it speedy, I have a yacht to catch to the Bahamas in a few hours.

PLAYER 

All I came for is a friendly wager between old colleagues.

AMET 

A wager? Now we're talking. When did you become a gambler, [PLAYER]? Did I ever tell you guys about that casino boat in Monte Carlo? [NAME] here wouldn't come out of the room the whole night. I was getting fed fougasse all night while you went over quarterly reports, remember? (Laughter)

PLAYER

I think my luck's improved, Amet.

AMET 

Well I'm game. Sally, call the deckhands and tell them they're all fired. Also, push back my trip in the agenda by a week.

Inter-quest Cinematic Dialogue

Alexander aligned the pegs of the plate key, sliding the bust of the Minotaur into the fresco adorning the temple door. The rumbling of shifting cogs and buckling jointures echoed through the tiled hall as the doors parted. At the far end of the space, a statue of Diana held the end of a rope gleaming gold.

Walking cautiously, Alexander drew his dagger, remembering the words of the Oracle: “He who unties the knot shall be king”. He grabbed the rope and shouted skyward “This is your test Zeus?! Halter of warriors?!”. Suddenly the twine grew hot in his hands as a heavy footfall rebounded from the arcade.

Alexander's hands flew open as a griffin emerged from the dark. It charged, mouth glinting and wide, and he ran to the door, cogs moaning and the door moving shut. He fell against the door, the snapping beak of the beast held back by a muzzle nailed in with brass tacks and connected to Diana's rope.

Alexander pulled a pan flute, a relic of Orpheus, from his satchel and played. The griffin's head lolled and fell to the ground. He sprinted back to the knot and with a deft swing cleaved the rope, Diana's hand crumbling to the ground. He wrapped the twine around his arm, and approached his new mount.

In Storm the Mondo Boys

MONDO BOYS is everything Girl Talk wants to be. This self-described “NY/LA mixtape/ sound collage collaborative” has elevated the art of the mash-up with their latest release Tidal Wave. Released via Aquarium Drunkard, an LA based music blog founded by Justin Gage, one of the MONDO BOYS' very own, this digital mixtape shows the group evolving with confidence toward their handling of their source material.

Rather than simply matching beats and juxtaposing flash in the pan Billboard singles, MONDO BOYS rely on samples mined from the depths of obscure A and B-side hits, taking the listener on a constantly undulating journey from Beck to The Drifters to Thee Oh Sees (after whose single the album was titled) in the span of a minute and a half. This diversity in source material is much of what sets MONDO BOYS apart from their contemporaries. Where the aforementioned Girl Talk might come off as shallow and similar sampling acts such as Onra and his Chinioseries appear obsessive, MONDO BOYS handle their fast moving and potentially noisome transitions with such finesse that it becomes hard to pin down which songs stand alone, and which have had an extra element of backing track or esoteric vocal added.

Tidal Wave stands out from their previous efforts as it sees the group operating with a much more concrete direction in mind. Drawing more from mid-50s to late 60's R&B cuts as well as a host of otherwise ignored yet catchy hits from modern outfits, this collection is lent a hint of fuzzy nostalgia and the feeling that you're impatiently flipping through your uncle's 78 collection. Somehow MONDO BOYS manage to find the balance in their organization, and what could be another tired exercise in condensed listening experiences is dealt with so balletically that it only begins to grow tiresome moments before the record ends. Hopefully the BOYS continue to set their energy toward compilations with a clear narrative direction, as it is the strongest distinguishing factor between them and their generally spastic and inattentive competition.

Luau Banh Mi with Mock Pulled Pork

In the land of luaus, a vegetarian can get a raw deal. Think of meat free dining in Hawaii and you'll conjure an image of poi, the starchy mush of ground ground taro root. However, with the help of another piece of island grown flora, you can get close to the island experience while keeping those adorable Hawaiian porkers intact.

I speak, of course, of jackfruit. Hailing from Southeast Asia, this spiky vessel is the largest tree-born fruit, growing as large as 80 pounds. Jackfruit is traditionally eaten ripe, after it has developed a sweet fleshy casing around the numerous chestnut sized seeds within. For our purposes, however, we will need an unripe jackfruit, bright green in color, and whose seeds are mere pips. More important is the lack of sweetness present in these unripe specimens, allowing us to use the normally discarded flesh of the fruit as the base for our meat analog.

I had the good fortune to come across a perfectly sized jackfruit at the weekly farmer's market in Kilauea. If you don't happen to be in the tropics, canned jackfruit in brine can be used just as effectively. We start by oiling all tools and work surfaces thoroughly; the jackfruit is incredibly sticky. A neutral oil like coconut or vegetable will work best, and coating your knife, cutting board, and hands in the oil you choose will make clean up infinitely more easy. Begin by removing the skin and shopping the fruit into cubes about an inch in size. If you are using canned jackfruit, wash it in a few changes of water. Toss the jackfruit into a slow cooker along with a couple cloves of minced garlic and a healthy slathering of barbecue sauce. Keep this mixture simmering for between two and three hours, until the flesh of the fruit falls apart at the touch.

From here the applications are only limited by your imagination. In the spirit of the pacific I decided on a Banh Mi, a typical Vietnamese sandwich, with a Hawaiian twist. A toasted French roll is coated in chili mayonnaise (or a mayonnaise substitute, if you prefer), and topped with an excessive helping of our fake pork. Add cilantro to taste and you'll have a meal that will have even the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, luau-attending carnivores in your life jealous.

Finding My Way Home

I've always approached my travel as a kind of love story. Even this article is shaping up like a Dear John letter I'd be writing in an airport with no intention of mailing it. I came to Budapest after a brief relationship with Prague which probably needs some exposition and more overarching romantic metaphor. Prague was something like a first girlfriend. It was my first time away from my motherland of California, and I showed up after a lot of contrivance, stumbled through those initial cultural differences, spent too much money on cheap trinkets to display my affection for her to the world, and took hundreds of photos of us, me and Prague, together. Then it was time for it to come to an end and I went back home sulking about it being over too soon, how it really was true love, conjuring a way to find a replacement for the experience I had. I saw I could continue my studies in Budapest, and that the city was available, and it seemed appealing. After all, both cities had been raised near enough to each other, I figured I'd know the territory well enough. So I did what people are prone to do when they get an eye-full of a new crush: I fantasized about every intricate detail, looked up more pictures than I should have, imagined this new life as something harmonious, manifest, decked out in the fin-de-siecle style of men with top hats sitting around cafe fireplaces and discussing Chekhov over glasses of Palinka and smoking hand rolled cigarettes.

I arrived in late August with two duffel bags of the bare essentials of my belongings and too many books. It was hotter than I had expected, hot to a point of stifling, which made it difficult to explore. I found myself wasting a lot of time in the air-conditioned hostel lobby where I could chain smoke and mull over the looks from sour faced older women on the metro eyeing the tattered hem hanging from my cutoff jeans. I was frustrated in the way the city didn't seem to need me as much as I needed it. I was getting news from friends all across Europe talking about the quaintness of Italian cafes and the crumbling architecture in Paris. I thought they were deluding themselves. Their lives were obviously full of gregarious produce vendors and friendly municipal workers, perfect replicas of every cinematic depiction they had prepared themselves with. Meanwhile I was getting yelled at by several check out ladies at the market near my house for not having a barcode sticker on my bag of peppers, and trying to accept the fact that the metro security didn’t contain the kind of characters I had seen in repeat viewings of Kontroll. 

So the honeymoon was over, which is a good thing, the pragmatism started to set in and eventually I could start feeling my way back home after a long night. I knew where to go to accomplish what I needed to, and there were a few perks I got accustomed to (the smoking inside, falafel permeation, and the nightlife scene which extended until breakfast, most specifically), but I could feel a restlessness writhing inside of me. I decided a weekend away was the best cure for my feelings of displacement, and I went back to Prague, something I thought I'd never be able to do. I had a lovely time, of course, her looks hadn't changed at all and I still knew all the right spots to go, but on the train ride out of town, I was happy to be headed back to Budapest. "Back home" was the phrase the slipped out of my mouth. Something had changed with the distance. Budapest seemed inviting, accessible, she opened the doors of her bars and ruin pubs to me. There had been a heavy weekend of rain and some of the stagnant soot and general grit had been sloughed off the buildings, and something about Budapest in grey looked very appropriate. The days were getting shorter and the yellow lights from the chain bridge were inviting in the fog and sometimes I would wander home discussing my love for the city with myself.

It took a while, but I've really adopted a great love for the city. It would have been easy enough to settle somewhere else, come to Budapest on a weekend trip, end up at Szimpla or Corvintető and leave with another check mark on my world map and maybe a passport stamp or two. But this is a city to dig in to, one that takes some nurturing and careful exploration and an understanding of its background to fully comprehend. This is a city that doesn't shy away from emotion, and it's nice to come from somewhere like California and not be confronted with the plastic happiness I grew up around. By now I've found my favorite bars, met some wonderful people, and conducted my life as happily as I imagined I would. It's defied my expectations in every way, and the differences are still exciting. More so, it has been completely different from the stock education abroad experience that most come back from their studies with. This is not a vacation and not the prefabricated European experience I've encountered through my conversations with aforementioned students in other capitals. Except for a few times of being hauled around on field trips or study tours, I've never felt like I wasn't first and foremost simply living in the city. The fact that I can conduct my life in the way I would back home has convinced me that this is a city that doesn't cater to the amusement park expectations of most Americans abroad.

In the end this has been entirely my subjective experience. And it's really hard to sum up in 1000 words the complex relationship I've had with Budapest and the understanding of the mechanism inside it. The homesickness is there, of course, but every good native son knows that nothing can replace their motherland. Some might say Budapest and I had some miscommunication at first. Some people never got in a fight with the city, others knew her type immediately. She's a temperamental lover, and sometimes it might not seem like she wants you around, but once you open yourself to her emotional being, she'll start reciprocating. She's a resilient city, a little calloused, and rough around the edges in some areas, but she's strong. And hey, we've only been seeing each other for a couple months, and only now do I feel like I'm really getting to know her.

The Price of Policing Pacific Avenue

The City Council has cast new light on the budgetary and homelessness debates in Santa Cruz this summer, refurbishing street lamps on the entirety of Pacific Avenue. The new LED light fixtures, already tested by the hundreds in the neighboring city of Watsonville, aim to cut down on the city's greenhouse emissions and reduce the cost of lighting up this popular pedestrian area of Santa Cruz. However, some local residents have questioned the prioritizing of this area, saying that political aims, rather than environmental, are behind the refurbishing of the area.

These new fixtures have been especially prevalent at the southern blocks of the street, an area police say has seen increased crime in the process of removing the transient element from the heart of the city's tourism district. Their construction is yet another footnote in the growing saga of a conflict between the city government and the perceived threat posed by a strong number of homeless individuals in the area. Within a few years, several ordinances have come down on this popular and lucrative shopping district, the first of which banned sitting on Pacific Avenue sidewalks, followed shortly by fines imposed on any individual carrying a blanket. Within the past year the city has become even more active, enlisting the help of First Alarm security guards as well as a downtown 'hospitality' force to curtail seemingly seedy behavior.

Many residents see these laws as an excuse to harass the homeless population, rather than a way to improve the quality of life in the area. Andrew Denton, a resident of Santa Cruz county for twenty years, observed the prejudice in police citations. “In the last year of the smoking ban, I haven't known one person to get a ticket. Not that people don't get them, but police won't stop for the average person. They want to give tickets to the people living on the street who can't pay them. They did it with them playing music, with them sitting down and panhandling in public, all the things that you're bound to do if you're homeless in Santa Cruz. It's just a bit insidious to think that it's happening officially.”

It's not just the discrepancies in ticketed individuals that has been bothering residents, however. Many complain that the budget is unfairly weighted in terms of keeping the economic center of Santa Cruz accessible. One woman, a bartender who lives two away from the shopping hub, explained her experience in appealing to city officials. “I thought I had heard a car accident from my living room, but when I ran out to check I saw somebody speeding away from sideswiping my car and a few others around it. It was too dark to make out a license plate and by the time the police showed up it was too late. The whole time they talk about lighting up Pacific, but it already has lights. Why doesn't the city spend any time fixing up our streets? We're the folks who live here and pay taxes.”

These gripes are not unique amongst the population of Santa Cruz, as residents find themselves slipping through the cracks between the city and the expanding university. Approximately 20,000 students are enrolled in the college located six miles from the downtown area, accounting for almost a third of the total population within city limits. Many locals feel that the city cares more about drawing new students to the university which is already facing an over-enrollment and funding crisis statewide. In discussing the issue, I was approached by a homeless man, speaking under the name Louis L'amour about his treatment at the hands of local police. “I had a friend that told me to stay away from the clock tower last Thanksgiving. That's where a lot of us go to sleep and we heard that police would be there to round us all up that night. A bunch of [the homeless] were bussed down to Watsonville, kicked off at the farthest stop and told if they were seen again they'd be arrested for vagrancy. I couldn't figure out why they did it until I saw all the families walking around near the holiday. None of these people want their kids living in a town with people like us, right? That's what they must think anyways”.

Opinion remains split on investing in Pacific Avenue to such a rigorous level. While the homeless population does present cause for concern, many residents would rather see their own interests raised above that of the downtown's aesthetics. Despite Pacific being a large part of our downtown economy, the city can not disregard other areas, lest it find further dwindling support from an already irate population.