The Armand Hammer Museum is across the street from our office. They have an amazing permanent collection of old masters' works, but also have a new exhibit that rotates through every few months. When a new exhibit rolls into town, I usually do a quick walk through...the new exhibits are often some sort of modern art that is way too much for my walnut brain to appreciate.

Today at the Hammer, I saw two pieces of art that deserve special mention.

The first is called "By the Lust of the Basidiomycetes Shall Every Perversion Be Satisfied" by Matt Greene, who is an artist that is apparently taken seriously--written up in NY Times, etc. "BTLOTBSEPBS" is a giant painting that depicts a very large number of people, usually in small groups, engaging rather graphically in every kind of intercourse imaginable. Call me a prude, but this is art? I can't believe that they let kids into this display, even with parents (there were several kids around the age of 10 in the room). Because of its highbrow name and "artistic" tenor, the piece is considered art, instead of porn. But porn it is, imho, and porn it should be called. Of it should not be banned, but I don't think the museum should be letting kids in. The porn magazines are hidden from kids in most liquor stores; but yet when it's gussied up with a fancy name that has multi-syllabic words in the title, it's allowed in a very public place? Seems wrong to me.

Secondly, in a separate gallery, there is a large picture that depicts of a group of men engaged it what could only be called a circle jerk, with one of their hmmm-hmmmm's ostentatiously featured and grotesquely oversized. Believe it or not, this was an anti-Iraq war piece. (Several captions made that clear.) And again, believe it or not, I saw two kids, both about 10, looking at the piece without parents. Nuts. Let's turn the page to something I am more comfortable writing about: money.

********

At the risk of turning this blog into a series of "hey I know a really really rich person" stories, I just have to share one more (for now).

A friend just sent me an e-mail after reading the Sergey/Anne marriage story and said, "how is it that you know everybody?" Of course, I don't know that many people, but knowing who I know is a bummer when so many seem to be making money up the wazoo. Actually...that's not really true, I am always happy for my friends who hit it big, but of course will admit to a little jealously as well.

The latest example is the below article from the yesterday's WSJ about some guys in Arizona, the Najafi's, hitting the jackpot. Several years ago, our firm owned the Ritz in Phoenix with the Najafis and we have been fairly close to them for some time. Jahm Najafi, the guy whose picture was in the WSJ article, was one of the instigators of an impromptu bachelor party for me during a real estate conference in Atlanta in 1999. And I just spoke with Francis, his older brother, a real estate conference in Chicago earlier this month. The Najafi's, who are truly outstanding human beings, will not squander their windfall...for years, they have been big supporters of some very worthwhile charities, who will surely benefit from this pile of money.

In 2003, the Najafi's invested $20 million to take Network Solutions private...and they just sold it in a transaction that netted them $700 million...the $20 million was basically their own money plus some very very close friends, (our invite to invest must have gotten lost in the mail!) so they didn't have to split the upside very many ways.

Since I can't link to it, the first three para's are reprinted below. I can, however, e-mail the article to anyone who is interested.

*******************

How Najafi Cos. Hit
The Buyout Jackpot
By PUI-WING TAM
May 30, 2007; Page C1

In the tech-stock doldrums of 2003, a boutique private-equity firm now called Najafi Cos. quietly paid $20 million of its own cash and assumed $80 million of debt to take VeriSign Inc.'s Network Solutions unit private. For the next few years, Network Solutions LLC -- a provider of Web address registrations -- stayed under the radar.

This year, Najafi sold Network Solutions to another private-equity firm, General Atlantic LLC. The price tag: around $800 million. Minus debt-servicing fees and other costs, Najafi says it pocketed a profit of around $700 million -- a return of 35 times its invested capital after a little more than three years.

How Najafi, run by 44-year-old Iranian-American Jahm Najafi in Phoenix, pulled off such a return underscores the golden age of today's private-equity market. It also demonstrates the outsize profit potential both of companies scooped up from the corporate dustbin and of smaller transactions that have largely been out of the headlines, as multibillion-dollar deals by the likes of Cerberus Capital Management LP and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. grab the spotlight.