Head filled with worries of impending doom? Think happy thoughts. You control the option to the memory rights to your glory days, exercise them. We all have that Summer of ‘42 or ‘67 or ‘90….

If you’ve ever done the backpacking-across-Europe thing after college, chances are you ended up on the Greek island of Corfu, at a hostel/hookup paradise called the Pink Palace. I ended up there in October of 1990.

That prior summer I’d banked $3,000 working as a dishwasher and cook at a Martha’s Vineyard café called Among the Flowers, run by a guy named George Gamble. As the summer wore on I was panicky over a pending move to Washington, D.C., where South Buffalo-born James T. Malloy, longtime Doorkeeper to the House of Representatives and a friend of my father’s, had agreed to help me land an internship working in the House press gallery presumably to network with real journalists. To my father’s disappointment, I broke the news by pay phone that the internship had to be put on hold and I was going to travel around Europe.

After starting my trip in Frankfurt, Germany, I eventually ended up at the Palace … where the Ouzo flowed like water, as did an almost San Franciscan communal spirit. If some Australian dude had 3 girls to choose from, he made sure you were introduced to his sloppy seconds. Everyone ate together, like at summer camp, steaming bowls of goulash, and hung out together as a big group at the nightclub following desert and a feat of teeth-strength performed nightly by an old man who amazingly could balance numerous plates on his head with a sizable wooden serving table clenched in his mouth.

What was supposed to be a two-day stop over turned into a week, and as I write this, a snowstorm blowing in, well I dare not think any more it, about the beaches in Corfu, the aftershave-blue water, no I simply cannot think about the other Greek islands (like Paros, where incredibly I ran into one of the Among the Flowers waitresses who was there studying art) … lest I start to get nostalgic or flat out begin to weep.

Who yearns or mourns for Greece?

Not the Germans. Maybe George Soros who said something at the end of Davos to the effect that he thinks the Greeks will figure it out, that the Greek paper tantalized him, so perhaps he can make up for breaking the Bank of England by personally leading an effort to bail out Greece.

Greece is the word, it’s got groove, it’s got meaning.

What, not one of your favorite Frankie Valli tunes? Bullshit.

Don’t deny yourself; embrace it:

I solve my problems and I see the light
We gotta plug and think, we gotta feed it right
There ain’t no danger we can go too far
We start believing now that we can be who we are

Greece makes promises to get it together, like your college roommate Stavros the pirate who promises not to steal cans of tuna from your hiding place in the closet, but the market does not seem to be ready to start believing now.

Still, taking the longer term view, isn’t Greece too big to fail?

Nah.

Sovereign busts happen. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve couldn’t save Greece even if they had the desire or the authority. Greece has to save Greece, Ireland itself, Portugal itself. Sagres—on the Algarve, an enchanting spit of sand straddling both the Atlantic and the Med, the centuries old stone walls of Portuguese explorer Prince Henry the Navigator’s School of Navigation looming in the distance, beers for a dime—itself.

Fiscal tightening will be required across the Eurozone:

“Further, while Americans go to insured banks and Treasury securities when they get scared, Europeans exit the currency as they have a lot more history of hyper inflation. That means a non virtuous cycle can set in with a falling euro, making National government funding problematic, which makes the euro continue to fall. This happened a little over a year ago due to a dollar funding liquidity squeeze. The Fed bailed them out with unlimited dollar swap lines and the euro bottomed at something less than 1.30 to the dollar.

“This time it’s not about dollars so the Fed can’t help even if it wanted to. And the ‘remedies’ of tax hikes and/or spending cuts Greece intends to pursue will only make it all worse, especially if undertaken by the rest of the eurozone as well. Fiscal tightening will only slow the economy and cause national government revenues to fall further unless the taxes are on those taxpayers who will not reduce their spending (no marginal propensity to spend) and the spending cuts don’t reduce the spending of those who were receiving those funds.

But it starts with Greece. Come on, Greece, let’s get it together, give us a package, a plan, a press conference, a union concession, a “text the letters G-r-e-e-c-e to…” fundraising campaign, a star-studded “We Are the Greeks” musical recording featuring all of the great Greek singers—Constantin Maroulis, Tommy “the Velvert Throat” Popadopolous from Astoria. Come on, right now, on the weekend of the Super Bowl in the honor of Jimmy the Greek, huddled in a Greek diner eating ambrosia, the food of the Gods, invoking the Titans, forerunners to the Olympians, the original masters of the universe, summoning Atlas the bad-ass muscle head ordered by Zeus to hold up the world on his shoulders for eternity (let’s face it, he’s done a heroic job so far with little complaint). Ah Christ on a cross what am I dreaming? The Titans can’t help Greece, nor can Soros, nor can Geithner, nor Bernanke.

But even if it does default, so? (so? so what? so let’s dance!) The Greeks can look to Argentina and see a perfectly capable post-financial Armageddon country.

Speaking of which did I ever tell you about the trip I once took to Tierra del Fuego?

Formula 44

When I check my pool numbers Sunday I am going to be looking for 4 and 4, not because double fours are decent numbers, they are (24-14, 34-24, 44-34) no I’ve been paying attention to the 44 thing which maybe you have heard about. This is Super Bowl XLIV, Obama is the 44th president, the Saints came into the league 44 years ago, Sunday will mark 4 years and 4 months since Katrina, the Saints won in overtime at 4:44 into the extra session (or 4:45 depending on news sources, although there is still a “44″ in there) and there are some other co-inky-dink tie-ins as well, and truthfully when I first heard about it I wasn’t really interested, that is until I saw yesterday that Peyton Manning and Drew Brees combined for 8,888 passing yards this past season.

Divide that by two and let neck hairs fly. The time-marking obsessed Mayans had a thing with numerology and their algorithms predicted 12-21-12 as the day their calendars officially became obsolete, although I just realized, thankfully, if you add those numbers together you get … 45….

3 Best: Super Bowl performances, by a player on a losing team

(3) Super Bowl XXXVIII
Jake Delhomme, 16 for 32, 323 yards, 3 TDs and no INTs.

(2) Super Bowl XXXIX
T.O., on a broken ankle, nine catches, 122 yards.

(1) Super Bowl XXV
Thurman Thomas, rushed for 135 yards, caught five passes for 55 yards (190 total yards from the line of scrimmage) and a TD, and the catch and run on the last offensive play, scampering, ducking and diving out of bounds as time ran out, setting the Bills up for a 47-yard-field goal that could have won it.

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