I would apologize for the photoshop but no. It is bad and that is the point. Anyway, this weekend, reporters sort of crashed, or at least attempted to crash, a banking frat party, and I am of course talking about Kappa Beta Phi, the society that had its annual inauguration dinner at some highfalutin joint last Thursday while the rest of us sat at home crying into our Natty Light or whatever. Setting the scene:

A bald man in a tuxedo walked into Manhattan’s St. Regis Hotel, muttered to a uniformed attendant and was ushered to an elevator. A woman in a fur hat the size of a lampshade followed, then a man in a topcoat, who licked his lips as he walked under a ceiling painted with naked cherubs.

This sounds vaguely like something Bulgakov might have depicted in The Master and Margarita. I mean, I am pretty much picturing the devil himself licking his chops and gawking at the fat kids on the ceiling. But, yes, guys from Apollo and Barclays and AIG were there, and they feasted on lobster and lamb chops, so depending on your proclivities, maybe Satan was in attendance. But it takes more than that to get an event covered on LOLFed. This factoid ALMOST got ‘em over the edge:

The group gives officers titles including grand swipe, grand smudge and grand loaf, according to a 2009 dinner program posted on the Journal’s website. One loaf was Herbert F. Boynton, who later became chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, a predecessor of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Smudge? Loaf? That’s it, Jason and I need new titles. From here on out, I am to be addressed Grande Burrito and he is… oh, I don’t know, I’ll let him pick his own. But yeah, even this wasn’t really enough to get me to spend fifteen minutes hammering out this post.

This is what forced my hand:

James “Jimmy” Cayne, then the president of Bear Stearns Cos., told the Times in 1990 that he was a member, even though he hadn’t been mentioned alongside Robert Rubin in a Kappa Beta Phi profile that appeared that week in the New York Observer. Cayne, 76, and other inductees wore dresses with pumps, and he recited a poem about bridge players making poor executives, according to the Times.

“I didn’t want to do it because I can’t stand making an ass out of myself,” Cayne told the newspaper.

Back in the day, a Kappa Beta Phi induction allegedly included JIMMY CAYNE IN A DRESS READING POETRY ABOUT WHY HE IS A BAD EXEC, folks. And I’ll leave it at that. Well, maybe that and a haiku:

Two dollarz a share
All I haz to show for it
Iz 4:20 now?