More lube needed!

 

I got my mobile phone bill today and it made me reach for my lube tube.

A few months ago I cancelled a mobile phone extra service charge that was on my monthly bill.  This should have reduced my monthly bill to $78.35.  Then my new bill came and it was for $99.75.  Because it says, if you can find where to look for it, it includes a ‘one time' charge of 21.40.  If you read the bill, the damn thing  says the charge is for 'discontinuing the service' and that the charge for the service included insurance in case I lost the gadget.  What???  At decision time for that service I thought the cost was a little excessive but I took it anyway.  Months later I find out if I lose the thing there’s a $150.00 deductible for a replacement.  What the hell is going on here?  Maybe they found out I listen to Fox News every once in a while.  You know, to get the sound bite of the day.  Do you think that's a good reason all this stuff is happening?  Did I make some kind of listener list?  I know Fox tells their listeners how to think, but not me.

 

Also spelled 'Stuff'

In the old days if your were late paying a bill you could just hide until you came up with the money.  Back when you could always find a pay phone.  People were so busy working they didn't have much time for phone gossip.  And the electric bill was a pittance.  Not like today. Today you need electricity to warm you, cool you, keep your gadgets charged, keep your food cold, keep your food hot, use it for your connection to the tv and the internet and all kinds of other things including shaving your legs.. We are all out of luck during hurricanes though.
But the biggest 'stuff' affecting bills today, is executive bonuses.  Today executives who make bonuses get a lot of their bonus money for figuring out stuff like screwing their customers.  They always charged interest for being late but now they have added a late fee which is just exorbitant interest camouflaged as a 'late fee'.  Guess who figured  out all of this 'stuff''.  Doesn't anybody realize the real reason for paying a bill late?  It's because you don't have money to pay the thing early.   And then, if they increase the amount owed, paying it is harder.  Where are they going with all this 'stuff'? 
When Charles Dickens was writing all those stories about mistreating kids and people who couldn't pay their bills, the actual people in the stories  lived in what was a debtors prison.  Mothers, fathers, whole families lived in prison.  That's what this 'stuff' reminds me of.  And you know what eventually happened to them? Everybody who couldn't  pay their bills became a felon.  They had so many criminals there wasn't enough jails. So they put the 'didn't-pay-your-bill' criminals on boats with real criminals and shipped the whole shebang to Australia. Yes , that's how they colonized  Australia.  Christopher Columbus was busy. Just thinking about that makes me seasick.  A Months long trip on the ocean and later, when they got there, they treated the aborigines like we treated  our Indians.  So, no matter who you are  you have to be careful.  You have to  watch out.  

If I take the night job . . .

If phone bills don't get paid, they will surely turn the damn thing off.  Zzzap!!! And worse, they will turn your internet off.  This is the worst because they also added another fee (to turn the internet back on) which is just another way of raising your need for a  lube tube.   They call this one a reconnection fee.  And it boils me when they look for the best football game or basketball game to turn the service off in the middle of.  That's diabolical.  These bonus people are really creative.  Put ways to make bonus money in front of them and anything can happen. 
And it seems like they always had a procedure to put 'stuff' on the bill that is hard to understand.  Like my one time charge or the AT&T bill.  I have never been able to figure out my AT&T bill.

Stop that.

And now the State of Florida can and does suspend your driving license if you don't pay certain bills.   So, you know what happens?  Right?  You get stopped because an officer wants to notify you the flap cover on you gas tank was not closed properly and it is sticking out.  If he checks you out, for whatever reason, your a goner.  Driving without a valid license makes you a felon, a natural enemy of the police.  He takes your license away from you and gives you a ticket for driving without a license. What the hell?  This is big lube tube stuff, underwear soiling lube stuff, and you ain't even home yet. 
So somehow you go home and of course you have to drive carefully.  You don't want to get stopped for jumping any traffic lights, or driving faster than 10 miles over the speed limit.  Impossible not to do stuff.  But, if you do get home, and the power is still on, and there is one beer left, it can cool you down a bit.  But the State is getting ready for you.  They are hearing ideas and plans which are coming from smooth talking lobbyists for private companies who's business is; building jails. 
I mean you are in big trouble.  Periodically you may have to go to court, where the judge adds penalties to the amount you owe for not paying up.  You can get  jail time just for not paying, like in olde England.  I'm  not researching this 'stuff' so it could be even  worse . . . .And your relatives and your friends, they stop taking phone calls from you . . . this is so much lube stuff you're gonna need more Clorox to wash your under shorts. 

What's the upshot?  For me?  I decided to pay the $20.40.

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Medical Advancements, NEW

Dr. Emmanuel, HGK,  Dr. Ashish

The world of new medical technology is mind   boggling.  Here we see 2 . . . football players?  Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . .  actors trying out for a role in a new action movie?   Wait a minute . . . wait a minute, I remember now because I was there.  Its at graduation for medical doctors and its Emmanuel and Ashish.  They're with that guy, who is saving money by keeping his Halloween 'old man' costume' on.  
Line up girls, if you need a suggestion for a question or two on what ails you, I have some left over from those that I asked some of the new female graduates.  One was,  "What did it look like I was suffering from?"
These really are, yep,  two, brand new  . . . doctors.  The guy in the Heat hat?  That's me.  The medical world?  It's moving forward..
 

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Mary ju wanna & Elephants

The good stuff

I don't care if you want to smoke weed or you don't want to smoke weed but there is an elephant in the room and it seems to be getting very little notice.
When I was eleven my father caught me lighting my first cigarette.  The match was already lit  but when I saw my father I put the match out.  He gave me a long non threatening look  and said, "OK light it up".  So I did and I took a mouth full of smoke, blowing it out without inhaling.  He said, "What's the matter with you.  That's not the way to smoke a cigarette."  Here he said, "Watch me."  He took my cigarette, took a big drag, and then rounded  his lips and blew some very perfectly round smoke rings.  He smoked cigars and I had seen him do it before.  It looked terrific.  Real cool.  He gave the cigarette back to me and I took a deep drag . . . I was still puking three days later.  I didn't smoke again till I was about fifteen.  And after that, my first and only weed tryout was not til years later.  I was an accomplished smoker by then and I could blow smoke rings just like my pop.  But, my first drag on a weed made me just as sick as my first cigarette, except the puking.  It only lasted about one very long, very painful puke.  

  In Colorado.  (Cartoon:Mark Brayer)

Before I got married I was the manager for the largest record store in Philadelphia.  High Point Record Shop, on 19th and Market Streets.  I was  hired away from my job at the Decca  Records distributor.  In less than a year I became the manager of the store. (Just bragging.)  While working there I made many fiends and they and some other customers invited me to a party on the weekend.  So I went.  It was held at a big hotel on Broad Street.  A mixture of musicians and some local entertainers were hosting the party and they had invited some locals and a musical group from Detroit, who were doing a gig   featured at one of our most advertised night clubs..  Everybody was talking about the 'shit' (the name for weed in those days) they had brought to the party and that it was the best.  No doubt about it, the way everybody was reacting, they were right.  When my turn to try it  came, I said, "No thanks, I don't smoke shit."    OMG!!  The reaction was astounding.  You would have thought my collar was turned around and I had a bible in my hand.  They were ready to bounce me.  The door to the hall was already open when I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute.  Tell me whatever the %&8##  hell it is, that you will do, after you get  high, that you think I wont do, without the pot?  I'll probably do it and I don't need any of that 'shit' as an excuse for doing  it. And you ought to try doing some of that stuff without getting high, you might enjoy it more, just like me.  Especially you (I forgot her name) she was a customer of the store.  I went over to her, pulled her to me and gave her a long kiss.  Ummummm.  It got a laugh and some people who knew me said, "He's hip.  He's ok. He's hip."  So somehow I lasted to the end of the party.  And believe me it was some party.  The smoke was so heavy in the rooms that when you opened the door and walked into the hallway you could inhale and get high on the second hand smoke before you made it to the elevator or your room.  Boy oh boy, those were the days.  When I got married my wife didn't appreciate all the stuff I stopped doing.
 
But what is overlooked here is, if smoking regular cigarettes damages your lungs and your health system, how much damage does smoking weed do?   I mean, you drag the smoke deep into your lungs.  We used to do the handkerchief test with cigarettes all the time.  You know, after you take a  drag you blow the smoke right from your lungs through your stretched tight hanky.  But we never inhaled the smoke that deep, like a weed drag,  or held it that long in our lungs, like you do with weed..  And yet the  yellow stain on the hanky was oily, ugly as hell and hard to wash out of the hanky.  I  never saw anyone do the hanky thing with weed.  And if you are still smoking, try it.  For most people, the arguments should be over, thank goodness.  But, forget about it.  I'm not a doctor and I'm not qualified to give medical advice, but to me its a no brainer.  I'm not moralizing either.  I have been  in the middle of clouds of weed smoke with entertainers and wanna be entertainers, and others just hanging out or having fun, like the party above, who were or got higher than the proverbial kite.  But to me common sense says, "It must do damage to your lungs, just like cigarettes."   Just common sense.  The elephant?   There he is!

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WE are getting, SCREWED!!.

 Take it easy, will ya,           (Anunews.net)

Keep some soft gooey lubricant handy.  We are all getting screwed all the time so you're going to need it.  
And socking it to the guy who is having trouble paying his bills has been the name of the game, forever.
Who the hell figured out that 'late fee' thing?  For sure a credit card executive.  Late fee?  That's an euphemism for exorbitant interest rates.   You take someone who already is having trouble  paying his/her bill, when he is late paying the damn bill, he gets charged  an extra 12% to  18% interest penalty for not paying it on time. (that's the actual annual interest rate for 1%  a month or 1.5% a month interest on the unpaid balance. That's a high amount of interest.  And then that person gets charged a late fee.  What?  There used to be state laws protecting the public against high interest rates.  But, because some bonus creating executive figured out there are no State laws against gouging customers with a late fee, they began this 'extra interest poop..   Charging 'late fees' are not in any state regulations protecting the public from  unsavory practices.  This is outrageous.  It is really interest and what they are doing, its just another lube job.  In most instances,  its the public that gets charged, you know the ones, Romney called them the  47%.  If you saw the first Rocky picture, Rocky's job before he got big fights, he  was a collector for the mob.  Collecting loan repayments.   If you didn't pay you could get your leg broken, or worse.  Well, often the late fees charged by our high profile  supposedly respectable companies amounts to an interest rate higher that what loan sharks charge.    Us suckers might as well carry a mattress around with us.   As a kid, when I was in Philadelphia, I could borrow money on the street at better interest rates.   (Was the lender mobbed up?  I don't know.  I only know I didn't want him to get mad at me.)    And when I moved to Florida, if a company charged somebody more than 15% interest for late bills, they were breaking the law.  Some years ago that law was changed by our well lobbied political leaders.  I call it legal stealing.  No different than when lobbyists get tax laws changed just for the people who pay them to get the votes.
But the thing is, you can't bring in transparency and emphasize all this kind of legal stealing poop.  Like switching a light on or off.  If you switched the transparency light on everything, all hell could break loose.  Do pharmaceutical companies make  lubricants?  Whoops!!
Like that Libor thing in England.  (London Inter Bank Offered Rate)   A few guys in London, at the top of Europe's  banking business, who were charged with setting the Libor interest rate for banks throughout most of Europe,  were sitting around having tea and determining what interest rate to make effective.  Normally the new Libor rates go into effect after they paid their luncheon check.  Just a routine day.  Something their grandfather's grandfathers had been doing forever before they passed down the rights to do it, to them.   I think its a Royal family inheritance thing.  You know for Lords and stuff.   A little while ago somebody put the light on.  All they were doing is something like knowing the opening price of a commodity before the futures market opens.   You don't think bankers would profit from knowing  this kind of information in advance, do you?  And then, when the light was turned on. . . .Omg!!!   The banking and the financial community had a fit.  But the Libor people couldn't understand what all the hullabaloo was about.  They have always been doing it that way.
So here is the thing.  Things like Libor are only indicative of what almost all businesses, who can do stuff and get away with doing it, do.  And have been doing to the public forever. 
And what about new technology?  After the innovation wears off a little, it just inspires more poop.   Its so prevalent nobody even thinks about it and if they did, it might be a catastrophe for doing business in the Democratic free world.  Example???  Pfffft! 

Ink Jets plus

How about every time you pass by a trash heap.  What's in that trash heap?  What is it that's blocking your view of the sky?  Along  with other stuff is your old ink jet and  the discarded cartridges from that old inkjet.  What possible reason could there be for the buyer of a new printer, with the same ink jet technology as the old one, not being able to use the remaining ink in the cartridges (including new and unused spares) from his old 'outdated' printer??  None, right?  Open the tube.
When did this poop start?  Forget about it.  Its always been going on.  Its just that new technology, which we think is being used for ever-new products, well, a big chunk of it gets bought up by these park their money off-shore people, who are only looking for new ways to screw the 47%. 

Remember when new cars were bought to keep up with the Joneses?  I remember wondering why you should buy a new car, when the only change of any consequence, was a different bumper.   No question, the American automobile manufactures are the reason Japanese car makers were able to gain such a large share of the U.S. market.
Now, here comes Michael Lewis who writes a book (Flash Boys), revealing  another way to really make money.  Pffffffttt!!!  Money!!!  And believe it or not it has little or nothing to do with the 47%. 
That's the only good part of these shenanigans?   Most of  the rip off  is to the 48 and over percent.  And the bending over guys are mostly on Wall Street.  You know, the guys who think lubricant is for keeping the sun off..    How the hell did Romney miss this one?  Or did they go to Mitt first?  ("You make money  by doing stuff to somebody else.")  That's his stock in trade.
The scam?  You order shares of stock from a Wall Street connected firm.  Doesn't matter the number of shares. A separate company (we'll call them 'XYZ'), that has their own exchange, arranged to have a computer located alongside all computers that do the trading for the Wall Street exchanges.  The deal allowed them to rent computer space right in the places where most of the originating stock transactions are executed.  That seems harmless enough.  I guess they said they only  wanted to receive more timely information.  So, the 'stated purpose' of each monitoring computer, is to send a copy of each trade to 'XYZ'. 


Pink Panther

Now, in milliseconds, (and I thought running a 4 minute mile was fast) before a transaction can be completed, the information is forwarded to the 'XYZ'  exchange by the monitoring computer.  When it gets there, remember, in milliseconds, they add a penny or a fraction of a penny to the price of a transaction, also in milliseconds, and then they send that 'higher by a penny or piece of a penny price' (for them) back to Wall Street.  Its an extra transaction but executed so fast, with such a small additional amount, who's going to notice?  Got it?   All of this stuff is finished before returning the  transaction, now with the higher price, for completion on Wall Street.  Whew!!. Now that is fast.  Even before you can feel anything!! 
Because the added on amount, per transaction, is so small, a mere pittance, it goes completely unnoticed.   The total amount can be millions.  Even I wouldn't get that one.  Beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.   And, since this stuff was happening without any notice of it, there were no  complaints.  I love it.   The pink  panther would be having spasms.
I thought of something like this myself, this happened many years ago, but it was based on the slowness of executing orders on one side of 'futures' orders.  Of course the  Chicago Board of Trade caught on after I made a few bucks.  So they changed some stuff and it stopped me. They speed-ed up the trades.  But not too fast for them to do it themselves.  They called it arbitrage.  Which is what I called it.   'Ce le guerre.'
This computer genius stuff is kind of like figuring out a way of catching the excess drops of gas, which spill out of the gas pump nozzle, when you pull it out of your car and replace it to its slot at the pump, after you finish putting gas in your car.  Excess droplets of gas captured at every gas pump in the country.  If you could do that, you could drive from here to there without paying to refuel, no matter where 'there' was.  And nobody needing any lube.  And in this one not only does nobody get hurt, its good for the environment.  (I don't have a patent on this idea yet so you're on your honor not to steal it.)  And, did you feel anything when you were eased into putting gas in your own car gas tank?  Did gas prices get higher, or lower, because you, the driver of the car were pumping your own and gas station employees who used to do it were getting fired?
Who pockets the savings caused by eliminating all those gas station jobs?
Lets go back to the milliseconds stuff.  I have a solution.  Instead of screaming and yelling sick birds (ill eagles), the government decides to make a settlement with the perpetrators, resulting in no jail time, just some community service, and then, the government takes over the whole shebang. (There is precedent.)  The siphoned off millions can be used by the government to pay for food stamps and find other good stuff for the group Romney called the 47%.  And maybe even coupons for tubes of lubricant.
But, after nationalization, it should not become  operational until the black guy is out of office. Because if he is still the president, the Republicans will call it a tax and say its just another way for him to raise taxes on farmers, on the air we breath or on the middle class or on small businesses,  and anything else they can think of.
Even the bad guys, who thought this up, can come out good.  They can take the fifth to avoid prosecution on any laws they broke and then they can move to Florida and run for governor.  But if they win they have to promise; no more of that peeing into bottles stuff.

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Lenny #2

The White House is still there. Famous Atlantic City sub shop.

After Alicia came to West Philadelphia High School she started chasing  Lenny.  Her father, who was estranged from her mother, was Sam Spiegel (S.P. Eagle.)  Yes the many awards winning Hollywood producer of outstanding films.  Including Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, On The Waterfront, etc..  Then finally, Alicia succeeded.  She corralled Lenny and they got married.  I had my doubts about the marriage because of the many things Lenny told me while she was still chasing him.  Of course they were just kids.  Well, time went by, schooling was in the past,  and  among other things Lenny became the assistant manager of a Howard's Men's Clothing store on Chestnut Street, in downtown Philadelphia..  During a trip of mine to Philadelphia, Lenny picked me up with his car and we drove to Atlantic City for a sub sandwich at the famous 'White House Sub Shop'.  60 Miles away. 
Gambling had not yet happened to Atlantic City.  We took a walk on the boardwalk and had a  long talk.  I can still hear him explaining to me something that drastically changed the way I bet on  competitive sports games. He saved me a ton of money.   For example,  Lenny explained that betting on football games with a bookmaker is just plain stupid.  He said look, when you bet on the games it includes the spread and every gambler knows winning against  the spread is tough.  The spread is the amount of points the favored team has to win by.  If the spread is say, 7 points, it means when you bet on the favorite, your team has to beat the other team (underdog) by more than 7 points.  When you bet on the 'dog', you get the 7 points.  Got it?  If the dog loses by 7, that's a tie and no money changes hands.   Ok, next you have to pay the vig.  Vig is like interest on a credit card, which, on a $100.00 bet, is $10.00.  You pay this extra amount to the bookmaker, but only if you lose.  Meaning, if you lose, on a hundred dollar bet,  you pay the bookmaker $110.00, while he only pays you $100.00, if you win.  There is no fee on the bets that you win.  
So you will understand, Lenny says, "Lets take betting on 5 games.  Say you lose 3 of them and win 2 games.  You pay the bookmaker $330.00 for the losers and he pays you $200.00 for your 2 winners.  So you lose $330.00 less the $200.00 you won, or, $130.00.  Meaning you pay the bookmaker $130.00.
Now, lets say you bet on 5 teams and the teams you bet on produces 3 winners and 2 losers.  The bookmaker in this case, pays you $300.00 for your 3 winners less the $220.00 you owe him for your 2 losing teams, or $80.00.00. ($300.00 -$220.00 = you collect, $80.00.
In other words you are betting  $130.00 to $80.00 that you can pick 3 winners out of 5 selections. . . . .
Me.  "What??   Get out of here.  $130.00 to $80.00."
Yep.  I had never looked at it that way.  Even I could see that is not too smart.  So, I made a radical change in my betting.   On football, on baseball and on basketball.  Afterwards, when a weekend TV game was scheduled and Rae asked me who we were pulling for and I told her I didn't make a bet, she couldn't believe it.  While she didn't like my betting, she kinda liked having a team to root for while the games were on the TV.  So we pretty much stopped watching the games because now there was little interest.  This only lasted  a short time.  Until I started making small bets just so I could have an interest and watch  the TV games.   And then, much later, when the kids went to college,  if  TV games included teams from Miami or the schools where the kids went, U of Florida, or University of Georgia, or George Washington Univesity, we generally watched and rooted for them.. 

My relationship and friendship with Lenny was solid.  We  had been friends for so long we trusted personal confidences in each other without even thinking about it.  Another bond was how much I loved his father.  But I lived in Ohio at the time and rarely communicated with anyone back in Philadelphia, except Jerry.  Long distance calls, cost money.  Jerry' s office had gigantic phone bills.   On one of my rare calls to Lenny, he confided that he had fallen in  love with a young lady who lived in a Philadelphia suburb and he thought he might leave Alicia.  But we had little communication and other than when I visited Philadelphia, I wasn't too much up on what was going on with him.  Jerry and I, on the other hand, talked on the phone at least once or twice a month and often more than once a week. 

His firm had a some kind of deal with AT&T so they swallowed the cost of the phone calls.  After eating our subs at the White House, Lenny and I sat on a boardwalk bench and talked for over 4 hours.  He was very hungry for a sympathetic ear.

I went back to Ohio and more time went by and then came the time, some years later, when Jerry wanted to show off.   He invited Rae and me to take advantage of his new status as a gambler,  and he got us compted (which means the casino pays for all of our expenses) at one of the big casino hotels where he gambled.  After we got settled at the hotel I called Lenny. He came to Atlantic City to visit with me and say hello to Rae. 

The two of us went for another walk on the boardwalk. We found an empty bench and he brought me up to date.  He told me he could not leave Alicia for many reasons, some he could not tell me about, but he did need someone to talk to . . . . .
Some years ago a customer,  came into the Howard store, bought some stuff,  and asked Lenny to have lunch with him.  At lunch Lenny asked him what it was about since the guy was a lawyer and he didn't have any legal business at the time.  His answer was that it was a matter involving his father in-law and that if Lenny was agreeable, he would set up a meeting, maybe a lunch, with someone else,  and he would get more details.  The new guy and Lenny met. The matter was for Lenny to act as a low level courier for a  business his father in-law had an interest in.  The home office of the company was in Israel.    It was a simple procedure, he would go on a vacation to Europe which would begin  in London and include a stop in Paris.  He would pickup an envelope in one place, like London, and drop it off in another place, say Paris.  Lenny agreed to do it. 
In addition to this stuff, other things had happened in Lenny's life since we last talked.  Like when the manager of his store moved up and Lenny was offered the manager's job.  Advice from the people he was taking the trips for was not to take it because it would interfere with the schedule of what he was doing.  What he was doing took more of his time and at that time, his father-in-law started to send money to Alicia.  The money came regularly and it kept increasing.  Much more than enough to cover his trip expenses..  
Then some other stuff happened and he became more involved travelling to more places, all under the guise of doing business. The number of trips increased and the trips were a little more time consuming, but he said he couldn't talk about it.  
And then a bombshell.  His lady friend, who did not know detailed information about what he was doing, told him he must leave Alicia or else.  This happened just before an important overseas trip and he did not realize it was actually an ultimatum that he leave Alicia.  When they parted he had told her to wait until he returned from his trip, when they would discuss it further.   And then, when he got back, he learned that she  had committed suicide.  
He started to cry.  We hugged.  The sobs were uncontrollable and lasted for a considerable time.  After he calmed down a little he said he decided to go on as if nothing had happened and he told Alicia nothing.  Then he said that was all he could tell me.  We had a another long hug and we walked back to my hotel. 
We didn't talk much after that until he got sick.  Jerry told me the doctors had discovered a brain tumor and it was inoperable.   It was a trying time for him and we reminisced on several long telephone calls but he never offered anything more on his adventures.  Those calls were the last times we spoke.  .
As kids he was a big part of my life.  We went to school together.  We had gambled together. We shot craps in alleys and alley ways, and played cards at the club and other places.  We shot pool at Bennies Pool Hall on 60th Street at Locust St..  We doubled dated and went out with girls to dances and street fairs and even on one occasion we had the same girl.  We played stickball and we went to ball games together.  We snuck into the movies together and Lenny and I were big instigators on mischief night, the night before Halloween, when we kids felt obligated to do mischief..stuff.   
One mischief stuff was, we leaned a bottle full of urine against the door of this guy who was always treating us like the guy did to kids, in the movie, Gran Torino.  The guy in the movie was played by Clint Eastwood.  With the bottle at a severe angle against his door, we put a tap on his window.  A tap is an arrangement that made a ticking sound in the house. All it was is a string of cotton, from a cotton spool to a safe place, completely hidden, across the street.  From there we jerked the cotton so it would keep up the tapping sound.  The guy kept looking out the window until finally, he opened the door . . . . 
We also took gates from the back fences and put them on the roof of their houses.  It was easy.  The gates were held in place by only 2 or 3 easy to remove bolts in the (opening) hinges.  
And Lenny was the guy who was trying to break down the outside door of a club that threw us out of their 'pay to get in' dance.  One of our guys hid in the bathroom of the club till it closed and then he opened the door and let us in.  We messed it up a little, and Tootie took the record player and some records.   We were leaving when Lenny began slamming the door backwards, trying to break it completely off.  A cop,  about half way up the block, noticed.  The cop shouted and began running towards us and he chased us.  I guess he followed me and Bobo because we were the slowest,  He followed us, me and Bobo, down an alley.  Bobo in front had led me into it from Larchwood Avenue.  The other guys went every which way.  The cop kept yelling,  he turned into the alley, behind me and Bobo,  still saying , "Stop"  and he fired his gun three times.  Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  The alley ended with about a 7 foot fence which was difficult for heavy Bobo, I pushed him up by his feet and then scooted over with one grab of the top and push with my sneakers.  The cop couldn't navigate it.  He was way too heavy.
Kids.  My memories are so clear on this kid's stuff. 
Its so hard to lose a friend.


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Three Trillion Dollars

Marty Sullivan, noted economist, working in his garage.

Marty Sullivan is the noted Chief Economist for Tax Analysts, a non-profit who specialize in tax law.  The prestigious non-profit tax information service is not in any way connected to the U.S. government.

He stated on CSPAN that big business has a bit of a problem.  During the presidential  election in 2012 we learned about the prolific use of off-shore bank accounts by businesses and wealthy people to hide what they are doing with the money they made by avoiding paying corporate taxes and on money they earned out of the country.  We need a lot more light on what they are doing.  And in language understandable to the average tax payer.  As for profits from wholly owned foreign companies, they were able to shift them to  wholly owned subsidiaries in other  (tax free) countries.   In an earlier post we brought some detail on how this kind of skullduggery is used to manipulate the tax code.. 

And now Mr. Sullivan has discovered that the amount they have successfully avoided paying tax on, has reached a staggering 3 trillion dollars.  All that money is in off-shore bank accounts and,  as you can imagine, for 3 trillion dollars, more off-shore accounts are needed all over the place.  (Vesco, where ae you?)

In other words just the amount of tax due to the U.S., from company profits, languishing in foreign banks, in some cases has now reached an amount larger that the gross national product of the country where the bank is.  An example is Ireland.  Are they running out of countries and banks?  3 trillion dollars?  Woooo, oooooh

Money stashed in Ireland exceeds their gross GDP.

There is movement by some lobbyists and congressmen,  to bring this money back to the U.S.  But to-do so, under current law, the money is subject to the tax that was avoided.    Naturally they want to bring the money back into the country but for some piddling amount.  Even a small number is staggering. 
I'm in favor of letting them pay on a sliding scale.  A trillion, the tax rate stays the same and all loopholes are closed.  Or,  1 1/2 trillion, drop the tax rate to say 30% and all loopholes are closed.  Or 2 trillion, drop the rate to 25% and all loopholes are closed.
Lets try some math here  . . .  Wait a minute, how many zeros follow the  3 (in 3 trillion)?

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Lenny & Tooty

As a kid, and after I became an adult, I had a lot of friends from different age groups, but mostly older..  Lenny was in my age group, we grew up together and we went to the same elementary school. And our friendship  continued into our adult years until Lenny developed a fatal brain tumor, which was discovered after he was in his sixties. 

Lenny look alike, Errol Flynn

Another one was Milf.  Real name, Milford.  Boy oh boy, did he hate that name.  And I agreed with him, it was a terrible name for a kid in that era.  But, I would  not call him John, which is the name he picked out for himself and liked.  To me he just didn't look like a John.   So I called him Milf.     And then, later,  I gave him a nickname that stuck, Tooty.  He had pretty boy looks with black, curly curls all over his head and he was very  well built. Tooty  was not much of a gambler, and never much of a sports playing kid either, except for pool (Billiards) which we all played, for money.  In pool, my best talent was staying out of games where I was over matched and had no chance of winning.  Of course that 'learning curve' was costly.  Whenever the rest of us went to play baseball or other sports Tooty was always somewhere else.
He lived with his parents in an apartment over a fruit store, a business they owned.    His chores, every day, were to get up early, before school, and load the fruit and vegetable stands in front of the store.  When the stands were filled his job was over and he would go to school and do whatever for the rest of the day.. 
He was the reason I tried huckstering.  He convinced me to do it because he could pretty much put a basket full of vegetables under each arm, so he thought anybody could do it.    He told me how much I could make in the alleys selling corn, for example, and how to go down to the  wharf and buy a bushel basket of corn or whatever I wanted to sell.  To me, in my mind, what I was going to do was determined by how much I could make, not on how hard it was to carry the stuff.  What a dumbbell.  Uh, oh.  I'm just putting this stuff down as I write and this post is supposed to be about both Lenny and Tooty.. 

Lenny had what was considered the classic good looks of the day.  Very masculine, he had to shave already, and he looked older, so most girls were as impressed with him as they were with Tooty.  Tooty had pretty boy, no beard, 'Tyrone Power', type looks, while Lenny was more in the 'Erroll Flynn' category.  

Further down, from where Tooty lived, on Sixtieth Street, near Spruce Street, known as  the drugstore corner where the downtown trolley turned east before stopping to pick-up passengers, there was another fruit store with a stand outside. The apartments on the second and third floors, atop this fruit store, were empty.  So a group of us, including both Lenny and Tooty, made a lease deal with the owner.  If he would fix the 2nd floor apartment into one long room.     It had a bath at the far end.  When the knocking down of the walls was finished we rented it from him for a year and it became our club house.  The club dues were pretty much for paying the rent.  Soon it had two sofas, one along each wall, and a table on one side with a small Bakelite radio on its rectangular top.  Also on top was a separate Philco turntable, which played dance music records.  The audio was played through the radio.. 
We used the club mostly for gambling.  We shot craps against the walls, we played cards, and we did all kinds of other gambling stuff.  While I was not a good card player, the rest of the members were terrible.  And I was a good learner, so I learned how to play gin, pinochle, hearts and a little bridge.  I was a terrible poker player because I could not stay out of a hand, and that continued to cost me as I got older.  But later when I was invited to play in higher stakes poker games, I just didn't play. Guys who cant stay out of hands, just get killed. 
Over the weekends we tried to convince girls to come up and (?) dance.  It became such a headache to the owner that he told us he wasn't going to renew the lease.  And then at the end of the year he went and  rented the club to a jealous rival gang who were all from a little outside of our neighborhood.  I think the landlord did this because we caused him so much trouble with noise and other misbehavior stuff and . . they paid him a little more rent.

There were three memorable incidents that happened at the club.  One was, we convinced this Tooty girl she could become a member of the club if she made out with every member of the club,. 
A 'Tooty girl' . . .whenever we went to a dance, Tooty would wait until dancing was well underway and then he would ask one of the 'not yet' dancing girls, to dance.  Sometimes he would wait until there was only one girl  not dancing.  When he was asked about his selections, he responded with, "Did your score yesterday?  I did." His selections became known as Tooty girls.
So Tooty convinced this Tooty girl she had to go through 'hazing' in order to join the club.  After (almost) every member got into her pants.  She got the nickname, 'Fish'.  And she was allowed to come up to the club whenever another member were present.  It was her  fascination with Tooty.  After that, a lot of times, when you went up the stairs and into the club room, you would notice her on the far couch mostly all mixed up with another member. 

Its not one of my favorite memories because  I realize now she just wanted to be with everybody else.  Its not an excuse.  Its was just the way kids like us did stuff.   Just like today, kids don't understand real consequences caused by doing stuff.  And, of course mostly because they don't want to..

Look! Look!  I got one.

Anyway a coupla weeks after she started coming upstairs we noticed Fred scratching himself like crazy and we kept telling  him to cut it out when one member said, "What the hell is the matter with you?  You got the crabs or something?"  
It was just something someone said out loud.  I don't know about anybody else, but crabs were something I had no clue about and I didn't want the other guys to know I was ignorant about the subject..
Well anyway, by this time we knew how to get into the third floor apartment, which had several rooms, and in one of them there was an old rickety table and some chairs.  And also by this time there was only one or two members of the club who had  not made out with the Fish. .  One of them was selected to go upstairs and help see who was infected.  We got him a magnifying glass.   I don't know where the hell it came from.  Looking back the result was hilarious. 
One by one we went up and sat on edge of the table with our pants down, and got examined under the magnifying glass.  When we came down, we sent another guy up.  The funny thing is the only other guy who had not been with the Fish, was Fred.   But he wanted to go up too and ironically, he was the guy who started the whole thing..  He was a wannabe member whose parents tried to keep a tight hold on him, and he wasn't allowed out much.  Anyway, no one thought it was necessary for him to go up for an exam because he was not the type.  He was, what we called a square.  His father was a lawyer and they had a house on 62nd and Larchwood Avenue.  Their house had an enclosed porch and the  furniture in it was more valuable than any of us had in our entire home, except maybe Lenny.  And they had a full time housekeeper every day of the week except Sunday. 
There was this thing about Fred, he was what you call hairy.  He had hair all over the place and especially on his chest and body.  Anyway he kept insisting and insisting he wanted to go up, until someone asked, "What harm is there?"  So he became the last examinee.   A couple of minutes after he went up we hear a shout.  We all run upstairs to the exam room..  There was Fred, practically naked, sitting on the table, and even from the doorway, you could see he was covered with something.  He had crabs all over.  Even in the hair in his arm pits.
By now we all knew what we were looking for and why.   No wonder he wanted to go upstairs. 
So we collected some money and sent someone to the drugstore, it was only about a block or so away.  The gofer bought and returned with some bottles of Cuprex.  I think that was the name.  We gave one bottle to Fred, he had supplied a dollar of the money and he needed the stuff the most.  We used the other bottles for every one else to use..  Medicinal prices in those days were still reasonable.



Afterward, Fred said he started putting Cuprex on his shoulders and by the time he got to the top of his legs he could see them beginning to fall off.  Which reminds me  of a joke I learned when I was a kid.  I may have put a sanitized version of this joke in an earlier post on my blog.  Goes like this.......

Cute little bugger

'To cure the crabs, you start with a bottle of alcohol and a magnifying mirror.  You rub a liberal amount of alcohol onto your  private parts area and put the magnifying mirror on the floor.  Then, after you wait a little while, so the crabs have time to consume the alcohol, you stand over the mirror, legs wide apart.   Make sure you give the crabs enough time to get drunk.  Then, when they look down and see these much larger private parts, they will jump down, eager to be on the bigger pair of testicles, and kill themselves when they land on the hard glass of the mirror.'
Oh yeah, Fred's explanation was, he was messing around with the housekeeper.
In one of the other  two incidents Lenny was featured.  It was a fist fight between the toughest kid in the club that now occupied our old clubhouse, and Lenny.  At first we thought Tooty would fight the guy, but they tossed a coin and Lenny won. (Or lost)  Lenny and this other kid went into the middle of 60th street and beat the hell out of each other with Lenny declared the winner when his opponent quit.  He said he thought he had broken his leg.. The fist fight in the middle of sixtieth was the talk of the neighborhood for months afterward because quite a few passersby paused to watch.  And Lenny became a local hero.

The next thing happened after the new club took over, they took extra care to lock the club up when they left.  And they let this guy sleep there as a way of guarding the place by keeping someone inside.   I  knew the watcher and it was not unusual for him to take me up to keep him company.



They hadn't made too many changes and the watcher showed me where they kept a 22 revolver.  It was hidden in the back of their record player. I kept telling everybody they kept a gun up there.  But they didn't believe me and pooh poohed it.  So one night when no guard was in the place, one of our guys jimmied the lock and about six of us went up to the second floor.  In those days the gun manufacturers hadn't bought the leaders of the NRA, if there was one, so guns were a rarity. Except those I saw in the movies, I had never seen a real gun.

Toy Capgun

It was almost pitch black in there with just a little illumination coming thru a window from a street lamp outside, on Sixtieth St. ..  It really was dark, but I went over and found the record player,  and put my hand into the back, under the turntable.  Sure enough there it was, still there.  I pulled the gun out.   It looked small, like a toy.  When the other guys saw the gun, they all started saying stuff like  "Ahh its a toy. Are  you kidding?  Its a cap gun."   It really got me going, so I said loudly, "Its a cap gun is it?  Its a toy is it?"  And then I pointed the gun at the far bathroom wall . . . and pulled the trigger.  BAM!!!!   Oh my goodness, it sounded like a clap of thunder. The room was basically empty except for the sofas which were certainly not large enough to absorb the sound.  It reverberated off the walls and scared the hell out of everyone.  Me too.  We thought you could hear it a block away.  We were just kids.   You never saw a faster scramble to get the hell out of there.  We jammed at the doorway and down the narrow stairs to get out of the building.  Whooo.  Afterwards nobody knew what happened to the gun but I found out later.   Tooty got it.  And he  made me promise not to tell anybody. 

This stuff has turned out to be  longer than I thought it would, so I think I will save Lenny's story to make another post.

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Santa (Repost)

While talking to me at Moore Park in Miami, where I was teaching tennis
as  a volunteer, a father of some kids  tells me he is Hebrew.  I say, "Great, the kids don't have enough problems being black."

Counting his kids and some cousins there are 7 non-Santa believing kids, out of the more than 100 kids at the tennis center.. The Christmas holiday is looming and the park program will be closed for 2 weeks.

One of the father's 3 daughters  (ages 7 to 11) says to me, "Coach Howard, I heard you talking, do you believe in Santa Claus?"

Shamyim, Toby, Rishona  December 2010

I look furtively to my left, then furtively to my right, and then, with the same intense look, I turn and look behind me.  Then I lower  my voice and I say, softly,


"When I was a kid I found out if you didn't believe in Santa, you didn't get any presents."  The kids are looking at me, puzzeled.
Then I ask the oldest, Shamayim, "Do you guys believe in Santa?"  She says,
"No."

Then I ask her, "Do you get any presents at Christmas time?"  She says,

"No".  I say,     
"See . . . . . . . ."

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Obama lied!!!

First family official picture.

While making speeches for the Affordable Care Act, Obama said, if you want to keep the health insurance you have now, you will be able to do it.  Then, the insurance companies started sending cancellation notices to their policy owners, saying the reason they were cancelling the policy was, the Obama Health Care Plan.  And that was true because this kind of rip-off policy is not permitted under Obama Care. Some Republicans  say what they say just to attack the president.  They do not say anything positive about the president and use sound bites to keep the public's mind set from understanding how hard it was to bring us back from the impending disaster that was facing our country and the entire world in 2008.
Even the Economist missed it when they commented that 'more Americans were kicked off their old insurance plans despite what the president had said about keeping your insurance plan.   I expect better from the Economist.  Obviously they don't have a consumer insurance correspondent.  Along with the entire U.S media, they don't get it.    What does getting kicked off mean???  Are you ready?  You may still be insurable.  Before Obama Care that would be great for you.  Because it stops them from kicking you off at a time when they do it to many long time premium payers when they have  health care issues..   Like when they are  uninsurable.. Under the Obama Care program, insurance companies can't do that.
Obama Care does not permit insurance companies from their long time practice of using odious methods of screwing the public.  Ignoring this, the Republicans jumped on what he said in order to take another shot at the black guy.   Which is like accusing a person with cruelty to animals because he was a little rough when he restrained a dog in order to prevent the dog from getting run over by a car or a bus.   So what else is new?  And the press jumped on what he said without any intelligent investigation.  Even the president can't stop an insurance company from executing a cancel clause in a policy.  They do it that way because while it is morally wrong, it is  not illegal.
So, the real question is, "Who the hell would want a cancelable policy, if he/she understood what it meant to have one?" 
And why or when would the company want to cancel your policy anyway?  This is  the most important question, overlooked by media 'experts'.  
The fast answer is, "If you don't make a claim, maybe never."  Of course if you do  make a claim, the answer changes to; "As soon as it becomes profitable for the insurance company to do so."  
When is that?   Read and reread this because except for the Grace of GOD you are not one of the many, many 'former' policyowners who had their insurance taken away from them (cancelled) after they got sick, or maybe made a small claim for stuff like high blood pressure or diabetes..  And now, after many years of paying premiums, to the same company, and thinking they had good health insurance, they take the coverage away.  And you find yourself not only without insurance, but yes,  now you are uninsurable.  For many, a bleak prospect indeed.  The cost of using health care in this country can bankrupt almost anybody.  And if an insurance company can get out of paying a claim, what do YOU think they will they do ???
I daresay one of the primary benefits of Obama Care is the FACT that it cannot be taken away from you for any reason relating to your health condition.. Yes, I am repeating it, like they do, at Fox News Channel, with their orchestrated sound bites.
However, it is my considered opinion that the insurance companies, they already have their lawyers and their favorite politicians, and of course their lobbyists, and their sound biters, figuring out how to enact laws so that they can keep doing stuff to screw the public. I mean after all, where is their bonus money going to come from?

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LaPierre & Loonies

When I was a kid I had a friend, Irv Mamet, who could make musical sounds using his mouth.  He could do riffs with the best of them.  He could imitate a saxophone and do riffs like Ella Fitzgerald did in a song or, he would pick up odd implements, like sticks from trees and then use them as drumsticks.  He could not only do drum rolls he could beat out amazing para-diddles. 
Trouble was, while he wasn't doing stuff like that he would be patting you on your arms or other parts and mumbling and he was always kidding around in a nutty way..  One day he got talking to a couple of guys and he called me over and said to me, "Howard you know I'm not nuts, will you tell these guys I'm not crazy."  Afterwards, I took him aside, and

Twas the day after Santa,  not a bad guy in site,
the presents were opened and the smiles were bright.

here's what I said to him, "Wait a minute Irv.  Let me ask you a question.  Don't you fool around most of the time??  He says, " Yes ,that's my point.  You know I'm just fooling around."  Ok, I answered, but don't you do it, like more than 50% of the time.?"
"Well, yeah, I guess so."
"Well Irv, then I'm afraid that if you are acting nuts more than 50% of the time then even if  you are not nuts, you qualify for being called  nuts" 
But wait a minute, lets make sure we all know what we are doing before we label him unqualified for a gun license. . . . . When I was younger and when things were getting a little hairy and I needed someone intelligent to talk to,  I started talking to myself.  I mean after all its not easy to find an intelligent ear.  And I do have 2 of those..  Specifically, this happened mostly when I was alone in my car.  I found it an easy way to think and started including the Man Upstairs in the conversation. You know, when sorting things out became difficult.  Between us we could solve almost anything.    
However, when I stopped at a stoplight and if you drove up beside me, you might think, 'look at that loony talking to himself'.' The Man Upstairs,  He  fixed it.  He found a little company making a little gadget, you could hold it in your hand, it played lots of songs. and then He steered this guy Jobs, who was running Apple,  to buy this little company and show the gadget to the world.   Anyway the next thing you know a lot of kids are carrying one around and listening to music.   And if you used an ear plug you could put the gadget on your arm or in your pocket. You could listen to music while you were exercising, like running, or riding a bike.  Wow!
I know you know this stuff but here is the thing, I consider the ipod the greatest invention since someone thought of sleeping on an air mattress instead of the ground, when you were out camping.  Just blow it up. Amazing.  Only trouble was, the gadgets were expensive.
But, now what happened is this.  A 'Job' like case of entrepreneurialism hit me like a bolt.  I went out and bought a set  of headphones for an ipod,   No ipod, too much money, just the earphones.  It had wires running from your ears to; your gadget?
So now, when  you pull up beside me, there I am with an earphone in my ear and a colorful wire hanging down, and you think, 'there goes another music lover, singing along.  I wonder who he's listening to?
But I'm not listening to anybody.  I'm talking to myself, or the Man Upstairs.  The other end of the headphone wire is in my pocket or hanging loose.  Brilliant.  No way I will loose my qualification for a gun license.  And today, if I'm talking to the Man Upstairs and  driving, nobody pays any attention.

Newest NRA member

But talking about loonies, the real, real looney out there is this guy who has engineered a take- over of the leadership of the NRA,   I don't think he could get the NRA presidency on a real membership vote, because anybody can see he's, like I said,  a looney.  At first I thought he was just doing this stuff for the money.  (Which he is)  but like Irv, this guy is behaving like a looney way more than 50% of the time.  So I think that's the real reason he's against background checks.  He doesn't want to get found out officially.  I mean this guy can't have all his marbles.  You can't say the stuff he says and qualify for a gun license.  In other words, he's protecting himself from loosing his license to carry a gun, because he thinks a background check on  him will out him as a nut.  Now how is that going to look?

.....Good guy? . . .Or. bad guy? .

One example.  Examine his advice on getting the bad guys. He says, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is, with a good with a gun."  I think this qualifies him for a stay behind an iron fence.  I mean lets take two of his friends.  Like the guy in the picture.  If they are friends of his they are considered good guys.  Right?  And of course they have guns?  Right?  Instantly ready to stop any bad guy.  Right?  But suppose they get into an argument themselves.  And it gets to the 'Stand your ground' stage.  Either one can whip out a gun lickety split.  So the other guy has to defend himself and before you know it . . ..  .  BOOM!  
So, here is the difficult question..  . Is the dead guy a good guy or a bad guy?  And how bout the guy who is left over?  What the hell?  What a mess.  And all because of this LaPierre guy.   He don't need that license as much as we need to put him in a cage.

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Super Bowl,1972



 



Dolphin team.  Coach Shula, right (sitting)

In the Herald I read that the Miami Dolphins football team was invited to the White House to be presented with an award by the  President of the United States.  As everyone knows the Miami Dolphins  won the Super Bowl and were undefeated for the entire 1972 season.  Wow!  I saw some of those games at the stadium.  And I saw the Super bowl on TV.  (Garo, Garo, be careful!) Wow again!
And then I read in the Herald that some players, who played on the '72 team, were not going to go to the shindig.  I wondered why. While I was watching some of the games in '72, when I saw a good tackle, or a spectacular play, it never crossed my mind to wonder if the player was a Republican or a Democrat.  Would any of you guys have accepted the award if it was from the Cheney etc. administration?  I certainly hope so.  Even though, as a VP, Cheney sure sucked.
Or maybe its Obama Care you don't like.  If it is, that should mean you understand Obama Care or you think you understand it.  If that's the case maybe you can explain it to me.  Its easy for politicians to speak positively or negatively about stuff, but ball players?  Would you believe that when Social Security was enacted some people were so upset they said worse things about Social Security than people are saying now about the Affordable Care Act. (Obama Care)
Or maybe you guys think Obama was not born in this country.  If you do, here, you have the Donald on your side.  Trump is not looking so good lately but I don't think he will go to jail like Martha Stewart.  He probably won't even get into trouble.  Except for the President, most important people are afraid to get into his lying mouth. After all he's only accused of being part of a scheme, that is bilking millions from the government.  Bilking  Taking tuition money from a federal veterans school program.  Like the governor of Florida's company which was fined 1.7 billion dollars.  How much do you think Trump's phony Academy will get fined? 
On the other hand, Martha Stewart, she went to jail.  Unbelievable!! 
Would any of you not go, and/or not accept induction into the NFL Hall Of Fame, just because a political figure was going to be part of the award celebration?.. 
In other words, whether or not you learned how to think when you went to college, if you don't agree with some policies of the administration, that is ok.  It is your right.  But following that logic, you do go to the ceremony because of past happenings in our country caused by then administrations.  Yesterdays administrations, and todays administrations, and tomorrow's administratons,  as a governing entity, they're all the same.  You shouldn't have to approve all of an administration's policies in order to receive an honor from your country for doing stuff. 

So as I see it, you do not pass up an opportunity to receive an honor from your Country for something you should be proud of. In your case, as a member of that great undefeated Miami Dolphin team..It was your Country when Nixon was president. It was your Country when Ford was President. It was your Country when Reagan was President, and it was your Country each time we had a Bush for President,  and it was your Country when Clinton was President.  And it is still your Country right now, when, dare I say it, Obama is President.



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I don't understand why the other Presidents didn't bestow an honor on the team for that achievement.  Possibly, using your logic, maybe, just maybe, they thought there were too many 'voting' players on the team that would vote for the other political party.  And I'm a little confused on how you would decide which President would have to have your approval in order for you to accept recognition for something the team did..  Do you think all of the team members that went to the ceremony agree with everything that is being done by the present administration?  Shame on you.  I'm sure the team will not mind if I say this to you.  And I surely do hope you can hear me,  "You missed it."

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