Leaving the Party I’ve never been a big party-goer. I’m not sure why that is. I consider myself a reasonably social person. I don’t drink much, if at all, but I think it would be wrong to attribute this to that. It certainly reinforces my preference to avoid parties, but I felt this way about parties long before I decided I didn’t care for alcohol. I am a morning person, which means late-night is not…
Visiting Hours It is a cold and rainy Saturday morning and I am sitting in an outdoor waiting room that resembles a bus stop shelter. The benches are cold institutional steel and the only thing on them is a scratched-off instant lottery ticket that is testament to the loser lifestyle. There is a small space heater cranking out heat and had it been summer, there is a small window air conditioner to keep things cool.…
Prisoner’s Dilemma I have a friend who is incarcerated in a federal penitentiary. As Cher said on stage the other night, jail is the short term one and prison is the long term one. Well, this is a prison and I will go this Saturday to visit him. He will be in prison for another month, having served one month of his two-month sentence. Let us stop and consider that for a moment, how hard…
Do the Right Thing It has been 76 days since Nancy Pelosi announced the House of Representatives’ investigation into an impeachment inquiry. We have had 76 days of action that basically has taken the form of Democrats unearthing countless facts that support the claims that Trump abused his authority, that he coerced and bribed President Zelinsky of Ukraine, and that he has continuously obstructed Congress in its efforts to get to the bottom of what…
A Very Slow Goodbye We are heading out for California in eight days. It feels like we’ve been heading out for six months. The fact is, we have been. Time seems to be passing far more slowly than it normally does. Everyone says and thinks that time moves by faster and faster as we age, but I’m here to tell you that time modulates based on the circumstances. Sometimes it whips past and sometimes it…
Death of a Giant The news just came across this morning that Paul Volcker died yesterday at the age of 92. At 6’7” tall, he qualified as a giant of a man. But mostly, he was a giant to most of us who lived through the financial worlds of the 1970’s and 1980’s. His impact on the economic history of the United States and perhaps the world was matched by few men. As a man…
Whose Father Do You Think Would Be Madder? Back in the days before political correctness was the necessity it is today, I heard my redneck Chairman (RIP) comment about a married couple who worked for us that came from different ethnic backgrounds. It is one of the funnier yet most biting comments I have ever heard that effectively denigrated two ethnicities all at once. I am hesitant these days to repeat the comment except in…
The Motorcycle Show I have a long history over the past twenty-five years with the New York Motorcycle Show. It is always held at the Jacob Javits Center on the West Side and it is in the winter, either in December like this year or in January, as in the past. There is nothing unique about the venue, convention halls are all mostly the same. The amazing thing isn’t that the venue looks like it…
Another Farewell Back in 2002 I went to Las Vegas to see Cher in her farewell tour. It was a fabulous show with Cyndy Lauper as an energized opening act. Cher had a schtick at the beginning of the show where she said she had been a “fricken’ Diva” for forty years and that she had killed it in that role. This was classic Cher show of extreme self-confidence, the sort of thing only a…
Stand-up Comedy If you’ve seen the movie The Aristocrats, you know how demented comedians can be. The Aristocrats “joke” is purposefully lewd and disgusting. In fact, the joke perpetuates and magnifies the crudeness and pushes comedians to try to out-do each other with more and more sick imagination. It does not help burnish the image of the profession. I’m sure one of the biggest challenges for new comedians is to know where to draw…