Balance, NIH, Italian Alzheimer's

Baur au Lac, Switzerland

When people tell me that I'm a nice guy, I tell them not to repeat that to anyone else as I have a reputation to maintain as a loud, foul mouthed, asshole. Gives my life great balance.
 
You gotta’ have balance in your life. You need people in your life that like you and people that dislike you. So I am grateful when I'm told that someone thinks that I'm an asshole. Gives me balance.

Also, if everyone I meet likes me I would have to be an innocuous, people pleasing son of a bitch. So it's a blessing for me to be told that XYZ called me a prick and XYZ gets at least a one star Michelin style rating from me. Being able to award a five star rating to those who dislike me enough to wish me dead is really a blessing. My two ex (thank God that there were only two) wives got really close, from time to time, to deserving a five star rating. But there was no way, as much as I needed their dislike that I was going to bend to their wishes and drop dead.

Paul Schupf gets a 5 Star Dislike Bernie rating from me. Schupf, while not Italian, suffers from Italian Alzheimer's. (Italian Alzheimer's is where you forget everything except the grudge.) To balance his virulent feelings about me which are so strong, I need ten likes to offset his dislike of me. 

While he is a very bright guy, a big giver to Colgate, he tests the outer limits of frugal and boring. He has both my sympathy for what he is and my thanks for disliking me. "Please don't tell anyone that you even know me." were my parting words to him in front of the Baur au Lac in Zurich. Two weeks in London and Europe with Schupf had made me suicidal. I had all but forgotten that self-perceived genius until I found out recently that he has been nursing a dislike of me for 30 years. I felt a surge of gratitude. He is still putting balance in my life.

A way to, inadvertently, generate dislikes and bring the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome to the surface is to get hired by the CEO to help with the company's Investor Relations program. The underlings of the company immediately resent you and their Not Invented Here sickness blossoms in full bloom. Actually my first ex-wife, Bonnie, 'invented' NIH. 27 years of shitty ideas was my record with the Princess.

NIH is deadly in a marriage and not too swift in business. In business you do have to make a lot of friends to balance the number of people with NIH that you piss off. Bill Goff was a great example. He wore Gucci shirts that were embossed with a 'G'. Bill was the Vice President of Sabine Royalty whose CEO was Ashley Priddy, who was a giant in the independent oil and gas business in the 70's. Ashley was very prim and proper, wore a jacket at all times, even in the office. I met him at The Tennis Ranch in Carmel Valley. He would play mixed troubles wearing a blue blazer and white ducks. Ashley was a fabulous human being. Called me, one time, a 'dumb Jew' because I wasn't asking enough money of him.

Bill Goff's office was next to Ashley's. I would go on a four letter word binge, very loudly so that Goff could hear it which in turn catapulted him into Ashley's office. I really enjoyed being an asshole and wiring Goff for sound. Just a little payback for his trying to knock down every idea I ever had. Ashley asked me not to do it ('Do you have to do that?') but I told him that pissing Goff off made me feel warm all over, like a clam in mud. Goff was, for sure, a 3 Star Dislike Bernie aficionado. Ashley was too smart to dismiss my ideas. On the other hand I needed Goff to put my Like/Dislike Ratio in balance.

Roses are red, violets are blue, don't contract NIH. It's really bad for you.