T. Boone's Beautiful Wind

T. Boone Pickens has his own way of saying things. Over the clink of silver on china in a Mayflower Hotel ballroom yesterday, the oil billionaire greeted a crowd of energy executives with an account of a speech he gave a year ago in which he realized after a few minutes that his clip-on microphone was missing. "I got up and I was sitting on it," he told the 250 luncheon participants. "So I took it and pinned it on at that point and I said if any press is here, they can put in the paper tomorrow that 'he talked out of his ass for the first five minutes.' " A lot of people say he's doing the same thing now. A bad bet on oil prices caused the 80-year-old tycoon to lose about $2 billion last year, and investors fled his hedge fund. His wife, Madeleine, had to rethink her plans to rescue thousands of wild horses from slaughter; she's now asking for federal funds. And Pickens's prize initiative -- a huge investment in wind power -- has been scaled back by 75 percent. Now, Pickens is relying on the kindness of strangers. "I need you, all of you: Help me on this," the billionaire told the participants in the EnergyBiz magazine conference yesterday. Before leaving, he repeated: "Join with me on this. I need you. I seriously need you." Read the whole Sketch