79 Seconds of Fame

They come into our consciousness and quickly vanish. And we forget how the media, including YouTube, takes the real life hopes and dreams of talented unknowns and squashes them right in front of us.

 

“Did you hear the YouTube video yet?” “Yeah, I saw the English lady. She was really good.” What English lady, I asked, as usual, last to know. Kyle had emailed Marlee, Marlee Facebooked Judy. I thought, what am I, chopped liver? “Email me the video.” That was Saturday night and I checked my Blackberry Pearl. Nothing. I got bupkes from my kids and wife.

            It’s not like I am totally out of it. I know Adam Lambert and Danny Goike, the top contestants from this season’s American Idol and I know that the guy from Grand Rapids, Michigan was given a lifeline last Thursday, so he still has a slim chance to win. But I have to admit, I just don’t spend that much time on YouTube and I hadn’t tried Hulu yet. I mean, what should I do, spend my life on the web? Instead, Judy and I downloaded Yes, Man from Direct TV and then fell asleep after the first half hour.

            I woke Sunday, forgetting anything about YouTube, as I went outside to get my Detroit Free Press. Mitch Albom was already writing about it. “By now, you’ve probably heard of Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old unemployed church worker with the voice of a Broadway diva,” he wrote. (“Up like a rocket, but then what?” Detroit Free Press, April 19, 2009, Page 23A) No, Mitch, I hadn’t. I guess I was not one of the 40 million who had seen the video. Brian Dickerson on Page 27A wrote his essay, “If Detroit had a Susan Boyle moment,” and then I had enough.

            I turned on the computer and clicked on www.youtube.com and searched for Susan Boyle. There were a few entries, all with the same Susan, the top one being 7 minutes and 7 seconds long. I was Number 29,952,437. Hey, not bad, I was in the first 30 million viewers for this one. Susan Boyle was a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, the original version before it was exported to the USA. She faced funny faces from the judges and audience members when she walked onto the stage in what Mitch called her “frumpy dress, unwieldy hair, stout figure, like a middle-aged Scottish woman who lives alone with her cat.” When she started singing, “I Dreamed a Dream,” from Les Miserables, the audience started clapping and the two hosts backstage chimed in, “You didn’t expect that, did you?”

            Out of the 7 minutes, the song itself was about 79 seconds, which included constant clapping, the audience howling, the two hosts talking, and quick edits of the judges’ jaws dropping, and Simon Cowell’s face turning into a huge smile. Number 14,321, which she wore above her dress, sang powerfully and in tune. But the panning cameras, quick editing, smiling Simon Cowell and awe from the other two judges seemed almost orchestrated, as if they were all tipped off that Susan was one heck of a singer. 

            This is the modern world of fame, which has been reduced from 15 minutes or 900 seconds to just over a minute, or 79 seconds to be precise. We have attention spans slightly longer than fleas. We catch onto the latest swept-up sensation or root for the newest underdog singer, who in this instance looks a little bit like a cross between John Candy and John Goodman, with thicker eyebrows. If you take away the curly hair and the pearls, she could be a member of the English Parliament.

            Boyle told the cameras in one of the YouTube videos that she was “never kissed” and never had a date. She is the latest “slumdog millionaire,” which Judy and I finally saw a week ago, except she is broke and technically not from the slums. And the money being made is not hers or Google’s which owns YouTube but the show’s itself and its producers, which includes the usually bombastic and caustic Simon and that other judge who’s also a judge on America’s Got Talent. You know, that annoying, overly critical one on the left and no, I don’t feel like googling his name. You can if you don’t remember it.

            Maybe Susan, who has sung for 35 years, will wind up being a bigger British export than the Beatles or the modern British iconoclasts, Radiohead. Why not?  She is a breath of fresh, frumpy air, unlike Fergie who sings poorly but sells well. Maybe she’ll wind up being like Mandisa, the 9^th place finalist on American Idol’s Season 5. Mandisa has done moderately well, which includes releasing Freedom, her second CD, last month. Or maybe she’ll be like Christina Christian from Season 1. You don’t remember her? Either did I but when I looked her up on Google, she was Number 6 from Season 1 and was eliminated after singing Peggy Lee’s “The Glory of Love.”

            They come into our consciousness and quickly vanish. And we forget how the media, including YouTube, takes the real life hopes and dreams of talented unknowns and squashes them right in front of us. And we consumers, reeling from the losses of Circuit City, Sharper Image, and possibly Saturn and Hummer on the horizon, take it in and get lost in the overwhelming blur of it all.

            I dreamed a dream last night, that I was in front of a cast of judges and when I tried to sing, “I Dreamed a Dream,” I froze and the words got caught in my throat. I was thrown off the show with the gong from the 1980s Gong Show. Then, I woke, happy that it was all a dream.

            Today, I see Susan Boyle in my mind’s eye. Next year, I doubt if I’ll remember her name.

The Bird is Gone

 

The thrill of the Bird is gone. He came and went in a time when the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News were thriving, a time when GM and Ford were still kings of the city and the world of cars.

 

I didn’t know it first thing this morning because the Detroit Free Press is now only delivered 3 days a week and Tuesday isn’t one of those days. I used to go outside when I arose before 6:00am, in good weather and bad, with a little thrill in my heart. I always looked forward to getting the newspaper every morning, never knowing what would capture the front page.

            I exercised, showered, and ate before I left for work and heard the news on the radio today that Mark (The Bird) Fidrych died the day before, apparently a victim of a freak accident. He was found on his farm, dead underneath his dump truck.

            The Bird, who was the Thrill of 1976, is gone. 1976, the 200 year anniversary of our country, the year after I graduated high school and was a freshman at Wayne State University in Detroit, was for me and most every sports fan in Detroit, the Year of the Bird.

Mark Fidrych, only two years older than me, was the rookie pitcher that aroused a city and nation after Nixon and Watergate. Looking like Big Bird from Sesamee Street, Fidrych became a baseball and pop culture phenomenon. He pitched fast, talked to the ball, lifted his arm in wild gestures, and won 19 games in 1976 for the Detroit Tigers. He became the All-Star game starter that year and was voted Rookie of the Year. He was featured in TIME, LIFE, and Newsweek magazines. He got to talk to President and Michigander Gerald Ford about baseball and filled Tiger Stadium when no one else could. The Tigers since its thrilling World Series win in 1968 had faded from my consciousness, until the birth of the pitcher, the Bird.

I remember going to see him, the stadium alive with excitement, 50,000 people screaming and cheering. I never got to see the Beatles live but was lucky enough to see the Bird. In all of my 52 years, I have never seen anything like the passion of Bird and his fans.

It didn’t last long. Injuries took a toll on the Bird and he only won 10 more games in his next five years with the Tigers. On September 2, 1980, his last complete game, he didn’t allow the Chicago White Sox an earned run and won the game, 11-2. Thrilled with the moment, he took the game ball and handed it to his friend and minor league manager and mentor, Jim Leyland, now coach of the Detroit Tigers. When Leyland was asked yesterday about Fidrych, he chose not to speak, his words stuck in his throat.

Dick Tracewski, Tigers’ first-base coach in 1976, said, “This is the way I’ll remember him; He was always happy, but always thrilled, even after his playing days, about the place in the sunlight that baseball had given him.” (“Antics didn’t sum up ‘Bird’), Tom Gage, Detroit News, April 14, 2009)

The thrill of the Bird is gone. He came and went in a time when the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News were thriving, a time when GM and Ford were still kings of the city and the world of cars. Today, the newspapers try to survive by cutting home deliveries, and it looks now as if GM is likely heading toward a “prepackaged bankruptcy.” On the front page of the Detroit News, which I bought at the Seven Eleven, the front page also says that, “counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or abandoned their job search, the number (of working-age Michiganders) exceeded 900,000.” One in five is out of work “and the percentage is growing.”

The state of Michigan is in a virtual “Depression,” whether it’s official or not. As motivator, Anthony Robbins, says, “You need real emotional muscle” to deal with the current economic time.

It’s time to mourn for Mark the Bird Fidrych and the plight of Detroit, Michigan. But it’s also time to flex our emotional muscles and feel lucky that we had a chance to see what the gift of passion can bring. The Bird was “always happy, always thrilled” to have the chance to be a Detroit hero.

I will always remember his gifts to me and everyone in our state: the thrill of his joy and his exuberant passion. We need this now more than ever.

The Shlomimeister

Believe it or not, it’s only $19.95. And if you pick up that phone now, we’ll add two Sham Wow towels plus the Slap Chop, for no extra charge! Can you say, “Holy hellsapoppin!?”

 

How many times when you’ve bitten your tongue, have you thought, wow, what a shmuck I am?

Better yet, have you ever had your tongue bitten by someone else and when you struggled to pull your mouth away, the tongue-biter held on for dear life and would not let go? No, don’t go getting ice cubes from the freezer. Instead, get your Shlomimeister today. Just suck on one of our Shlomimeisters and your pain will instantly disappear.

How do we do it? Call it instant Novocaine, the stick that has the trick. No, not that trick. Instead, we use a secret anesthetic ingredient in our lollipop that takes your pain away instantly, 12 times as much as the nearest pain reliever. And it’s even made in Germany. You know the Germans make good stuff. Just think Mercedes and Hindenburg. And better yet, the Shlomimeister doesn’t drip and doesn’t make a mess. You’ll say, “Wow, Shlomi, every time.”

Believe it or not, it’s only $19.95. And if you pick up that phone now, we’ll add two Sham Wow towels plus the Slap Chop, for no extra charge! Can you say, “Holy hellsapoppin!?”

I can only imagine the commercial above when I think of the Sham Wow pitchman, also known for his food choppers, arrested last month. Who knew his real name was Vince Shlomi? I just think of him as Sham Wow, and now can more comfortably see him as Scam Now. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, (“The Smoking Gun,” March 27, 2009) Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she “propositioned him for straight sex.” Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly “bit his tongue and would not let go.” Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit noted that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face. After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops.

So say it with me, “KEBLAM POW!” (just like on the old TV Batman series.) I wonder if Shlomi used one of his Sham Wow towels to wipe up the blood from his tongue.

You know, it sometimes feels good to give one of these famous celebrity hucksters (think Madoff, Kwame, Spitzer) some good old American shame. Okay, what should I have against Shlomi besides him being too darn slick and effective in selling some German-made overpriced crap? About two months ago, I walked into Bed, Bath, and Beyond and they were unloading two pallets of Sham Wow. I was so happy I didn’t fall for the con and give them $19.95 for some towels.

I knew if I bought them that I would never use them. When I want to clean up dirty liquid spilled on the floor, I like to throw out the paper towels, not twist them in the sink and save them for later.

Paper doesn’t last forever in the environment. I’ll be Sham Wow does.

Now, can we get this Shlomi face off the TV once and for all? His 15 minutes of fame have long ago expired.

Opening Day

Yes, it may be a crappy time to live and work in Detroit, but we have as much hope as anyone in any city has.

 

It was the best of days; it was the worst of days.

Well, let’s forget for a moment about the worst of days, which involves a Detroit reality check: a lousy, disappointing season last year for the Detroit Tigers, a record win-loss ratio 0-16 for the Detroit Lions, a nearly cataclysmic last few months for GM and Chrysler and major auto suppliers in deep debt and near extinction, and the Detroit City Council, led by the belligerent President Monica Conyers bringing almost as much infamy to the city as ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick did.

When a judge allowed the city council’s rejection of the Cobo Hall compromise legislation that took five years of negotiations between the state of Michigan and the Detroit regional authority, Conyers was ecstatic. She slapped the courtroom table and yelled, “Yes! We won!” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson had a slightly different reaction. “In-friggin’-credible,” he sighed. “What City Council has done is overturn five years of hard negotiation that was Detroit’s last best chance to secure long term funding for Cobo Hall and frankly the North American International Auto Show.”

The auto show and the Detroit auto industry loses but Detroit is the winner, in Conyers’ eyes. I say, let her try to sell the lowest priced houses in America (many selling for the same price as a McDonald’s Medium Fries) to the same citizens from the city with the highest unemployment rate in the country. That’s what I call a win/win.

But close your eyes on Opening Day and smell the newly cut grass at Comerica Park. When Opening Day comes, allow the citizens of the Detroit Metro area to be hopeful. And that’s just what we were when we scampered downtown on a partly cloudy, partly sunny day that thankfully had no rain.

Anything is possible on Opening Day. My son, Kyle and I, parked at the parking lot of the legendary Leland Hotel on Bagley which was built in the glory days of 1927. When we got to Comerica Park, we searched the stones outside the stadium ground but couldn’t find the memorial stones that I ordered in 1999 before Comerica Park was finished. We searched for the three stones: “BLESS YOU, BOYS—SID G & HARRY G,” in memory of my Uncle Sid and in honor of my cousin Harry, “KYLE GOLDMAN—BAR MITZVAH ‘99”, and “KENNY GOLDMAN—A TIGER FOREVER.”

When we sat down amidst the sold-out crowd, we waited to see if they were going to honor my cousin, Harry, as we had heard, as one of 25 who had been to the last 25 Opening Days. That never happened but instead, we honored legendary Tiger player and announcer George Kell who had recently died. We viewed the new logos on both sides of the General Motors logo on the tribute wall under the water fountain which owner Mike Ilitch paid for himself. We stood for a moment of silence for LA rookie pitcher, 22-year-old Nick Adenhart, who was killed along with two others the night before after a drunk driver ran a red light and broadsided their car. Then, three long-time employees of Chrysler, Ford, and GM threw out the first pitches and were hugged by Detroit rock star Kid Rock. And the game finally started.

The Detroit Tigers made it a memorable Opening Day by walloping the Texas Rangers, who had just swept the Cleveland Indians in their opening series. There was great pitching and even better hitting, led by superstar Miguel Cabrera who kept up his torrid hitting pace with a grand slam hit over the left center field wall and another shot that was a few inches short of a second home run. It was one of those games with lots of cheering and smiling under the 54 degree sunshine and very little tension, as we took the lead and kept building on it until the 15-2 final score. My son, Kyle, got a little sunburn on his face but he didn’t care. He was thrilled to be at another Opening Day, his third already by age 22, and I was happy to share it with him. I felt like Ferris Bueller without any guilt. I had taken a personal day to enjoy the hope that a good spring baseball game can bring. The Tigers may not win the World Series but wouldn’t be nice if they did? After the riots of 1967, Al Kaline, Willie Horton, and Denny McLain led the city to an unbelievable come-from-behind World Series win. Why can’t Verlander, Cabrera, Granderson, and Gallaraga lead us this year? If they did, Monica Conyers could once again scream out, “Yes, We Won!” And the rest of the city and Detroit area would join in with her.

            Yes, it may be a crappy time to live and work in Detroit, but we have as much hope as anyone in any city has. We just have to turn back the clock to 1927, the Roaring Twenties, when the Leland was built, and imagine when the city was young, the auto industry was the fastest growing industry in the world, and the Tigers had just let go Hall of Famer Ty Cobb. Yeah, they trailed the league-leading New York Yankees by 27 ½ games at the end of the season, but so what? The world was ours.

            Today, the movie industry is making movies in Detroit. So if Motown can go to LA, Hollywood can come to Detroit. If we don’t become the next movie-making mecca, we still have Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers to root for and if not them, we still have Ilitch’s Red Wings.

            Let’s forget cynicism. It’s been a very hard winter and now it’s Opening Day. Today, in this birthplace of renewal and hope, we can take the time to dream, just dream….

 

 

The Bar Mitzvah Brawl: Quick Dan vs. The Rock

The Setting: Birmingham’s Townsend Hall

The Occasion: Some Kid’s Bar Mitzvah on March 21st

The Crowd: 300 people in attendance

The Main Event: Dan Gilbert vs. David Hall

 

Remember those annoying TV and radio commercials interrupting every Detroit Pistons game and on just about every other channel on TV? David Hall, former Vice President of Rock Financial, a division of Quicken Loans, would come on and discuss the latest unbelievable adjustable mortgage loan, 50 year “smart loan,” 10/30/50 balloon-fixed loan, or some other mishigoss. I listened, wondering should I refinance again and get that 0 % down loan that would allow me to buy a car or new basement or big screen TV?

            I didn’t fall for it but thousands of others did. I used to believe in the power of Rock and believed that David Hall was Rock Financial’s CEO. I didn’t know he was just a partner, vice president, and pitchman who had joined Quicken/Rock in 1985 and rose to become the head spokesperson for the organization, creating a slew of advertisements in both radio and print media. He was responsible for training thousands of bankers over his years at the organization and as a Senior Vice President, had been in a position to benefit greatly from the types of fraudulent loan activities that eventually brought down the subprime mortgage market and eventually the entire United States housing market.

The real rock, of course, behind The Rock was Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, which owns Rock Financial. Dan fired Hall in December, 2007, supposedly for mortgage fraud. Gilbert’s lawyer, Jeffrey Morganroth, said that Hall was fired for “gross misconduct and breach of fiduciary duty.”

When the two tiny titans met again at the bar mitzvah, you could cut the tension in the air with a circumcision Gomco clamp.

According to Morganroth, representing Quick Dan, The Rock (Hall) attacked first, ready to go public with the Bar Mitzvah brawl if Gilbert didn’t buy out some investments that Hall has in some of Gilbert’s companies. But according to Birmingham Police Chief Richard Patterson, Hall came to the police and filed an assault complaint against Gilbert. Hall’s lawyer, Todd Flood, said, “David Hall did what was appropriate. He’s the victim of a crime and he took the matter to the police.”

No, the rumors aren’t right. Quick Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, didn’t summon Lebron James to his side to pulverize The Rock and Hall didn’t bring his old buddy, Ben Wallace, to attack Quick Dan.

As far as anyone saw, this was a minor skirmish between two business associates who made a lot of money in the good old days of mortgage mischief and who are now singing the blues.

I can only imagine Hall in a new Pistons commercial singing his heart out to Quick Dan Gilbert with Madonna at his side:

 

“Don’t cry for me, Danny Gilbert.

The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance

And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions
They are not the solutions they promised to be
The answer was here all the time
I hate you and know you hate me

But don’t cry for me, Danny Gilbert.”

Go Green

We need a jolt of hope and optimism that we in Southeastern Michigan will survive the withering away and possible death of General Motors, Chrysler, and the domestic auto industry.

 

Green is the theme of the North Farmington High School disciplinary program this year. The goal of the program is to get high schoolers and their parents to make better use of the earth by not wasting so much and being conscious of the choices they make. A recent study (“PC Energy Report US 2009”), for instance, estimates that leaving computers on overnight wastes $2.8 billion on excess energy costs in the U.S. alone.

            So shut off your computer tonight and when you turn it back on, you may learn more about the futures of GM and Chrysler. We just learned that CEO Rick Wagoner of General Motors resigned at the request of the Obama administration. Obama said over the weekend that the best chance of survival might be “utilizing the bankruptcy code in a quick and surgical way,” the same point many Republican senators said in December when they voted to turn down GM’s request for a government “bailout.”

            We have been watching the exodus of so many green dollars out of our city and state for so long that we are no longer shocked at new automotive news. We just wait and wait for the proverbial “next shoe to drop.”

            Will GM avoid bankruptcy? It doesn’t look good right now, unless the bond holders and UAW take the threat seriously. And will Chrysler be rescued by Fiat? Don’t hold your breath.

            We do, however, need to take a deep breath and have faith that one day, GM and Chrysler will be the green car companies that Obama and Congress wants, producing excellent cars with great fuel economy. But that implies that they will still be alive, competitive with Toyota and Honda and Tata Motors which is now producing a car that’s cheaper and smaller than any European bug or beetle.

            At least for a week, Michiganders have something to be thankful and hopeful for, and it’s just as green. The MSU Spartans surprised the top-seeded Louisville Cardinals to make the Final Four for the 5^th time in the last 11 years. Thirty years after Magic Johnson led Michigan State to the NCAA title against Larry Bird, we have a chance to win it again at Ford Field in Detroit.

            In the first year of the new millennium, on April 3, 2000, MSU won their second championship. 58 days later, on June 1, 2000, Rick Wagoner took over as CEO of GM,  chosen to lead the largest car company in the world to new glory in the new century. Less than a decade later, Wagoner is gone but MSU has a chance to repeat, which means little to people in their pocketbooks but a lot in their hearts.

Magic Johnson, after the Elite 8 game in Indianapolis, said, “You couldn’t have dreamt this up, it’s so incredible.” (“Spartans win big for Detroit,” Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News, March 30, 2009.) “Oh, my goodness, this is the greatest feeling in the world—for Detroit and the whole state of Michigan. You’re gonna see a lot of green and white in town. We needed this.”

We sure do. We need a jolt of hope and optimism that we in Southeastern Michigan will survive the withering away and possible death of General Motors, Chrysler, and the domestic auto industry. We need to feel that we as the world’s underdogs will slay the highly-favored Connecticut and North Carolina basketball teams and their superstars. We need to believe that we in Detroit will beat the Japanese car companies that have weakened us. We need to believe that after all is done, there will be a level playing field, in which our car companies can truly compete.

            Go Green! Beat U Conn.

Go Detroit! We need to believe we won’t end up like Moe Green in the Godfather, our hopeful visions shot right through our eyes.

            Go GM! Beat the government, the UAW, bond-holders, and the United States public that believes that you shouldn’t get any more money from taxpayers. Show them all that they are dead wrong and that you, like MSU, will be lean, mean, and green, for many years to come. 

           

TAILS OF MANHATTAN by Woody Allen (The New Yorker, March 30,2009)

This is a funny piece from Woody Allen that reminds me of the comic from the Take the Money and Run days. I do have to warn you that if you die laughing, you might be reborn as a pickled herring.

 

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

            “Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

            “It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

            “O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

            “We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

            “Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

            “The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

            Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a Mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

            At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

            “I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

            “Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M’s rings and bracelets.

            Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

            “Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

            “Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P. S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

            “With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

            At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

            “This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

            Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile-floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

            “This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

            Madoff, unable to free himself from the two Atlantic denizens, bolted from the restaurant and fled yelping into traffic. When Moscowitz tightened his viselike grip on his septum and Silverman tore through his shoe, they persuaded the oily scammer to plead guilty and apologize for his monumental hustle.

            By the end of the day, Madoff was in Lenox Hill Hospital, awash in welts and abrasions. The two renegade main courses, their rage slaked, had just enough strength left to flop away into the cold, deep waters of Sheepshead Bay, where, if I’m not mistaken, Moscowitz lives to this day with Yetta Belkin, whom he recognized from shopping at Fairway. In life she had always resembled a flounder, and after her fatal plane crash she came back as one.

 

 

 

 

 

Duck Soup for the Depressed Soul

 

“The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad off now
Just wait ’til I get through with it
The country’s taxes must be fixed
And I know what to do with it
If you think you’re paying too much now
Just wait ’til I get through with it…”

Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup (1933)

 

When you’re feeling down and out, I have the perfect prescription. Just take a hot, steaming bowl of Duck Soup, (not the kind from the New Mandarin Garden,) savor it, and call me in the morning.

            If you’re desperate for a tonic to escape the blithering talking heads discussing ruined financial institutions mixed with massive amounts of government intervention sprinkled with a touch of two ongoing wars and covered with worries about new batches of terrorism, you don’t need a prescription of Zanax, Proloft, or Cymbalta. Instead, you need a medicine cup of laughter, the kind that Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho supply in large dosages.

            And that’s exactly what I needed when I found the DVD on Blockbuster Online as part of a Marx Brothers series which included other good tonics like Horse Feathers and Animal Crackers.  I think Duck Soup is the funniest movie ever made and that includes such classics as the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera or more modern classics like Woody’s Take the Money and Run; it’s the perfect movie for tough times, an absurdist, frenetic, satire about the stupidity of government and war.

            The teaser for the DVD says, “In this 1933 Marx Brother’s film, the mythical country of Freedonia is broke and on the verge of revolution. Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), Freedonia’s principal benefactress, will lend the country 20 million dollars if the president withdraws and places the government in the hands of the ‘fearless progressive,’ Rufus T. Firefly.” Duck Soup was not appreciated when it was made in the midst of the Great Depression. As Tim Dirks wrote in www.filmsite.org, “The outrageous film was both a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release – audiences were taken aback by such preposterous political disrespect, buffoonery and cynicism at a time of political and economic crisis, with Roosevelt’s struggle against Depression in the US amidst the rising power of Hitler in Germany.”

            The movie, eventually, started becoming popular in the 60s, watched by college students in revival film festivals and museum showings. My friends and I became Marx Brothers fanatics when their movies played at the 8 Mile Road Cabaret Theatre. Rob, Rick, Steve, Scott, and I were lucky then to see most of their classic movies. We didn’t care if the theatre was old and rickety and the sound quality poor. I don’t remember how many people usually attended the movies. I just recall that we would laugh like wild hyenas often and loudly and it didn’t matter to us if anyone could hear the lines amidst our laughter. We just loved convulsing in serious fits of laughter.

            When we were young, we didn’t know that laughter produces endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, increases activated T cells, decreases stress hormones, and increases gamma interferon which activates the immune system. We didn’t think much about health or worry alot about Nixon, Watergate, a stagnant stock market, Ford, Carter, or high inflation. We didn’t think a lot about the deeper meanings of Duck Soup; how it satirized high society, manners, government, war, the court system, marriage, and wealth. We just liked to laugh at the delightfully hilarious moments, gags, fast-moving acts, comedy routines, puns, pure silliness, zany improvisations, and insult-spewed lines of dialogue. The crazier it was, the more we laughed. We laughed at absurd scenes like this one, set in the federal courtroom, when the Minister of Finance interrupts the trial of Chicolini (Chico Marx) for treason:

Minister of Finance: Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes.
Chicolini: Hey, I got an uncle lives in Taxes.
Minister of Finance: No, I’m talking about taxes – money, dollars.
Chicolini: Dollars! There’s-a where my uncle lives! Dollars, Taxes!
Minister of Finance: Aww!

Aww, there’s a lot of stuff in Duck Soup that might cause grimaces and eye rolls, but there’s a lot more that can really make you chuckle out loud.

I had seen Duck Soup a half dozen times over the years but I was up again to seeing Harpo resting with his horse in bed after dressing like Paul Revere and warning the town about the coming war. I was ready to listen to the hilarious “Laws of My Administration” and “The Country’s Going To War” musical number which includes the Negro spiritual “All God’s Chillun Got Guns.” I was ready to smile at Chico mirroring Groucho in the mirror pantomine scene, and laugh again at the large white flower vase stuck on Groucho’s head in the final war scene, the one with Groucho’s face and moustache on it. And it never grows old, the moment at the end of the film, when Mrs. Teasdale starts belting the national anthem of Freedonia, “Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave…” and is pelted by the four Marx Brothers with tomatoes, apples, and oranges.

If you like to cry when you watch a country that’s broke but deep in the muck of warfare, watch CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. If you’re depressed but would rather laugh as you watch a country that’s broke become absurdly entangled in war, check out Duck Soup.

And why is the movie about the mismanagement of government and the craziness of war called Duck Soup? Is it because it refers to “gullible suckers?” Not according to Groucho. He reportedly provided the following recipe to explain the title: “Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you’ll duck soup for the rest of your life.”

Good News

I don’t about you but I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I am tired of being pummeled by the constant drumbeat of negative news: terrible economy, companies going broke, people losing jobs, yada, yada, yada. We hear it everyday, we read about it, see it on TV, and listen about it from friends and family.

            I just have to say loud and clearly: ENOUGH ALREADY!!

Of course, I know that I’m as responsible as the next person for bringing this negativity to the level it is today. As I have written about what I see and feel and think, I know that I have been as saddened and pessimistic as some of the most cynical columnists.

            So today, I’m telling myself now to SHUT UP and smell the hot, roasted, organic, free-trade coffee that I was lucky enough to buy a cup of today. I’m telling myself to focus more on appreciation than on griping and criticism.

            Yeah, I know that AIG sucks and that the government is just a collection of drunken spenders living it up on our paychecks and taxes. I know that Wall Street was filled with greedy selfish people not worrying about the consequences of their actions. I know that some of our most precious companies will go bankrupt and that more people will lose jobs.

            But I myself am not going to take it anymore! I’m not going to get angry but instead be thankful and appreciative for what I have. And that’s the message that I want to send. That message is so desperately needed in our country and our world.

            I have been sending positive messages to my company, even though our sales are still down compared to last year. I am focused on our new catalog, our 20^th Annual Trade Show a few weeks ago, and finding any bit of good news to share. I have asked the managers and they are responding with news about high quality performance from employees, weddings, inventory reductions. Heck, I’ll take any good news because the truth is: we can’t get enough of it. We hear hundreds of things every day to fear and be worried about, to get depressed about. It’s time to turn this whole mishigoss around.

            It’s well known that positive people who express positive emotions are more resilient when facing stress, challenges and adversity. It’s time to get positive. It’s time to be grateful for the lives we have, the people in our lives that we forget about, the things we enjoy, the food we eat, water we drink, the air we breathe.

            Those who read this are still alive. We’re still over ground. And we should be thankful we are.

            So my little mitzvah for today is to share the little mitzvahs of others, to be a positive influence on my company, my friends, and my family.

            This will not be easy, because old, negative habits are hard to break.

            But I will give it a shot. My first bit of advice is to turn off CNN and CNBC and click on www.goodnewsnetwork.org. Did you know that Father Maurice Chase celebrated his 90th birthday on St. Patrick’s Day by taking $15,000 in cash to Los Angeles‘ Skid Row and doling out the money to hundreds of the needy? How about that a Michigan Semi-Conductor plant posted double digit profits? Yes, even in Michigan.

Joining the Good News Network costs $2 a month, a bargain for someone desperately searching the world for good news. But believe it or not, good news is everywhere you look.

It’s right under your nose, within your heart and your brain.

LOL

“I have two last pieces of advice. First, being pre-approved for a credit card does not mean you have to apply for it. And lastly, the best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat.” –Stephen Colbert, delivering the commencement address at Knox College

 

Did you hear the one about the unemployment rate in Michigan? It shot up in the first month of the year like it was on Cialis. The 2009 unemployment rate of 11.6 percent was 59% higher than the 7.3 percent rate from January 2008.

            But there is a little hope for us Michiganders and the hope comes from a late-night talk-show host from LA. Jay Leno, the multi-millionaire who at last count owned 84 cars and 73 motorcycles, is coming to the Detroit area in early April. For those hoping Jay is coming for job restoration, think again. NBC is not hiring Michigan TV workers for Leno’s new 10 PM show coming in the fall. Instead, he is coming to the Palace of Auburn Hills in April for not just one but two nights of comedy. Maybe it’s because of guilt that he’s one of the last people in America not hurt by the economic downturn or maybe it’s because he really does love Detroit because he loves cars. But whatever the reason, Jay is offering suffering Detroiters a first: if you don’t have a job, his night of comedy is FREE.

            Leno’s “Comedy Stimulus Plan” show is being offered to the unemployed in Michigan at no charge. If you wait in line and tell the box office attendant that you don’t have a job, you can get up to four tickets free. Two Leno shows will allow almost 15,000 a night to laugh instead of crying.

            For the last few years, too many Michigan job holders have wept when they lost their jobs, their homes, their self-esteem, and their confidence. Over 500,000 have lost jobs in the last six years, many of them in the beleaguered automotive industry. And while GM and Chrysler fight for survival and bailout money from the government while automotive suppliers hang on financial threads or go bankrupt, thousands more wait to see if they will be next for the unemployment line.

            Just think: if Jay can come here to do pro-bono comedy, how about a few other gifts to people without jobs? How about the thousands of American cars sitting on new car lots that could be donated to those desperate without work? How about the banks offering some of their foreclosed properties to the unemployed? Stuff for free could really help those banging their heads day after day, searching the employment ads, begging for a job, just any job.

            Over the last year, Michigan payroll jobs fell by 6.2 percent. That included: An 114,000-job loss in manufacturing; a 60,000-job loss in professional and business services; a 49,000-job loss in trade, transportation and utilities; an 18,000-job loss in construction; a 14,000-job loss in leisure and hospitality services; and a 12,000-job loss in the financial activities sector.

            Laughing amidst the fear and sadness is good medicine. 55-year-old Brenda Smith of Warren who lost her job with Chrysler 18 months ago, said, “This is just what this area needs” (“Leno: Let’s make it 2 shows,” Korie Wilkins, Detroit Free Press, March 17, 2009). The hope of simply laughing without paying for one night shows how desperate the Detroit area is. We will take whatever we can get.

            Workers who still have jobs are afraid because companies are desperate to survive so they cut costs, and that means cutting employees. And if you don’t have a job, what company that has slowing sales is going to hire you?  It’s a vicious circle that needs to stop, but what is going to stop it? Good jokes and laughter? Well, I guess that doesn’t hurt. If you can’t afford health insurance, at least you can laugh out loud (LOL) about doctors. Jay Leno once said, “The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.”

            There are a lot of idiots other than doctors who have helped put the economy into the toilet. You could get mad about the 40 AIG employees who are due to collect $165 million in bonuses after nearly bankrupting the company and forcing AIG to receive $170 billion so far in government aid. Or you can get mad like Jon Stewart at Jim Cramer and CNBC for not warning viewers enough about banks and the stock market in 2007.

            Or you can find glimmers of hope amidst the fear. Spring is around the corner, MLB’s Opening Day will be here in a few weeks, and this week begins the NCAA basketball tournament which will end in Detroit at Ford Field on April 6^th. So forget about lost jobs and dream that your favorite college basketball team might win the big one and be crowned champion in Detroit.

            I prefer to laugh with Jay Leno and John Stewart instead of getting mad or getting lost in sports. Maybe you’ll laugh at this quote from Jon Stewart: “You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.”

            Let’s all start laughing again, pushing ourselves to believe that each day will be less terrible than the day before and that good work and good days will be here soon.