Booze, Money, Parenting

'Are you crazy? That was one of the most God damn bizarre, totally fucking insane things I've ever seen. You need to be institutionalized.'

One afternoon ole Joanie phoned me and asked me to come by. This was before I realized that Joan was still drinking and using. (I'm a slow, but not stupid learner). The sporadically paid house keeper let me in and told me that Joan was in the bedroom.

Just as in a Vegas hotel suite, there was a small, Japanese style, circular copper bath tub adjoining the bedroom. (No, this 'hotel room' didn't have a mirrored ceiling over the bed.) Joan was in the tub as naked as a new born kid, lecturing her daughter, the oldest, and her two teen age boys.

It takes a really fucked up woman, small tits and all, to lecture two teen age boys while being naked, in a bath tub. I went off the wall, after the kids were gone, and went on a screamer starting with, 'Are you crazy?' Dumb question since the answer was apparent. Between the booze and the pills, Joan was really looney.

In walking to see the naked Joan in the tub, I had to walk by her enormous bed. There were 3 very expensive Boggier ski suits and two Bogner après ski outfits laid out on the bed. Since Joan didn't ski, I wondered what the hell that goofy broad was going to do with $6,500 (1975 $) worth of ski clothing. After the kids left and I was finished ranting about a mother lecturing two teen aged boys while naked, I said to Joan 'You don't ski. Why the ski outfits?'

Miss Fashion Plate says, 'I'm going to Tahoe next week and I have to look like a skier.' Her dead husband's very wealthy family owned a place in Tahoe that Joan used from time to time, every winter. At least she didn't buy a set of skis to further impress everyone.

Joan, it turned out, never went clothing shopping. She had a sales person at I Magnin, a very upscale store, who would bring her, periodically, clothes from the store to choose from. To call her well dressed would be an understatement. To call her a profligate spender would be kind. She suffered from a serious disrespect of money.

She was also a hat freak. Joan was small but always wore, huge, great looking, broad brimmed hats. Kinda' looked like they would enable her to fly. In addition to being a hat fashion freak, Joan was also a hot check writer of great consequence. Joan never opened her mail. As with other serious drinkers and users, Joan was afraid of what message was in the mail.

After the Princess unloaded me and I moved into this overpriced Palo Alto dump, I would walk past my mail box for days afraid to open the fucking mail box. My constant feelings of impending doom kept me from even taking the mail out of the mail box, much less opening it. But obviously I did, later rather than sooner.

Joan had a 'keeper' hired by her wealthy relatives to try to keep Joan and her free spending, hot check writing reined in. No hope. So every year end the family would send the 'keeper' a bunch of money to settle up Joanie's hot checks and insane charge accounts. They didn't want their world famous name besmirched.

In those days I was driving a real piece of shit Pinto. I was busted on my lower case bronx, jewish, ass and the car was loaned to me by a car dealer friend with a promise from me that he would be paid a rental fee when I could.(Which I did: $2,000 for 18 months, in 1975 dollars.) Joan felt demeaned being in the Pinto and I felt the same way. I was too macho to drive her car. That fucking Pinto was one hell of a comedown from the Mercedes that I had just totaled.

Fell asleep driving at night on the then new 280. I had spent a day in S.F. with my friend Patti Brown getting my 'colors' done. I think that I'm a 'fall'; no one ever called me 'Sunshine'!

We had dinner at Lorenzo Petroni's North Beach Restaurant. I drank a ton of coffee which didn't keep me awake when needed. On the way back home, on 280, Patti asked if I would mind her taking a nap, which I didn't, not realizing that a few minutes later I would join her.

Wham, Bam, Slam. I came awake, saw that we were hurtling off the road, going a gazillion miles a fucking hour. Having spent four years driving on icy roads in fucked up Iowa, I knew better than fight the steering wheel. We took down some saplings, newly planted trees, ripped a chain link fence up out of the ground, bounced off a horrendous oak tree and finally came to a halt. All of this action while in a Mercedes convertible with its soft top. (The car was totaled; its fate is another cockamamie story.) Miraculously, Patti and I escaped with a few scratches. We did kinda go into shock the following day.

After I had said 'goodbye, good luck, so long' to that sad soul Joan, I kept hearing from Joan's friends about her increasingly bizarre behavior. I decided to go back East and talk with her dead husband's brother and father and see if I could convince them to change their approach. So like a jerk I schlepped my busted ass back East, naturally flying first class, always feeling better to 'go' in flames, rather than sparks.

The following morning I was picked up by a car and driver and driven to a suburb for breakfast with Joan's brother in law at his home. He had just come off his tennis court, showered and was wearing a white terry cloth robe. He thought, I guessed, that he looked debonair. I thought he looked like shit and a real snob as well.

We had breakfast and he asked me lots of questions. The most irritating question came as he was questioning my motives in wanting to see him. I kept telling him my only motive was to try to save Joan's life. Then came the question out if this very bright, fabulously rich, asshole's mouth: 'What are you, some kind of a Christer?' My response was a simple 'Fuck you.'

He finally got dressed and we drove into town to where he and his Father, the Family Patriarch had offices. I told that old man that if they didn't change their method of dealing with Joan that she would surely die. That son of a bitch responded by literally saying, 'It can't happen soon enough for me.' That old prick shocked me into silence and he took off with stories if how Joan was the cause of his obese son's heart attack and death on a tennis court. Yeah, someone held his kid down while some one stuffed enormous quantities of food down his kid's gullet.

Yeah, unreal stories about Joan are many but these days my sympathies are with Joan and her inability to cope with life and resorting to pills and booze. Her husband's family name is now associated with family law suits (over money, naturally) and meaningful charitable and educational gifts. But when the time came for them to stand up and be counted they fell flat in their fucking, selfish, greedy faces. With friends like that Joan didn't need any enemies.

A Drinking Problem & Pill Problem..First Chapter

Naked as a jay bird, Joan screamed at me "Don't you dare hang up on me and then take the telephone off the hook."

Joan (not her real name) was somewhere between being a hard drinking genius, nympho and a fucking maniac. I met her in AA which, sadly, never worked for her. She was a spectacular dresser, wearing a hat all the time, and very, very bright (when sober and not 'doped up'). In addition to her drinking problem, it turned out, Joan had a pain killer problem. Her Mother was sick and on pain pills which Joan took and loved.

As with most people with a serious drinking problem her weapon of choice, when in the bag, was the telephone.

Joan lived in Atherton in one of the world's ugliest houses, unless you liked houses that looked like hotels, and Joan often voiced that opinion of her adobe hacienda. The family room had an old fashioned soda fountain and a pool table. The family room was as big, if not bigger, than my one bedroom apartment of some 800 square feet.

Joan's husband, when I was taking her out, was looking up at the grass. In Yiddish he was in 'Yenna veldt'. He had been grossly overweight and died while playing tennis. According to Joan he would come home, drink a few martinis while in their home sauna. He then would have dinner and eat everything that wasn't nailed down. He topped off the dinner with an ice cream sundae or ice cream soda that he made in his private soda fountain. All the goodies that he made had over the top quantities of ice cream and whipped cream. Hardly a wonder that he keeled over on a tennis court playing varicose veins doubles.

One time on a trip to the Big Apple I was staying, in act of penance, at the not lamented long gone, Downtown Athletic Club. It was convenient to Wall Street and my appointments. The rooms were just one step removed from being jail cell duplicates. The bars were missing but the rooms were stark.

The lone telephone operator was a tired old man. Joan got in the bag early California time that night but it was midnight in NY. She started calling repeatedly and driving that poor old man and me crazy. People with drinking problems tend to have a list, in their heads, of people to call when in the bag. So by two in the morning, NY time, Joan moved on to the next poor son of a bitch.

After getting back to the Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts I avoided even calling Joan. After a few days she called at about 1:00 AM, drunk as a sailor on leave. I hung up on her but she wouldn't give up and kept calling back. So I took the phone off the hook. About 30 minutes later the front door bell starts insistently ringing and I buzzed her in. Up the elevator she came and I let her into my apartment. She was wearing a long hair lynx fur coat. She screamed at me 'Don't you dare hang up on me and then take the phone off the hook.' And off came the lynx coat with Joan just wearing her skin.

Joan's drinks of choice were Drambuie or Champagne, sometimes both in a night of spirited drinking. That night, she told me, it was a full bottle of Drambuie. I could puke at the thought of consuming a bottle of that shit.

Joan was all for spending that night with me but having sex with someone blind drunk was too disgusting for me. So after some 'discussion' she left, having put that insane lynx coat back on while leaving. Owning, much less wearing, a lynx coat in Atherton is like a Bedouin wearing a snow suit in the desert.

Naturally after she got home she started with those fucking phone calls again. The next day I called an attorney (One if the three most dangerous people in the world is a Jew with a lawyer). He talked me out of filing a harassment complaint against Joan and suggested a heart to heart talk with her.

A few days later not so sweet Joan and I met for lunch at a place in Palo Alto called Stickney's. After ordering lunch, we went through the usual 'amenities' which included a few strong Jewish American Princess (Joanie's genre) strong insults of me. After one of her fucking nasty insults, I leaned over the table and said "Joan, if you ever call me again, day or night, I'll slap that tight little ass of yours in jail.” Laid a $100 bill on the table for the lunch and tip and walked out. Never, thank God, ever heard from Joan again.

More to come on Joan's idiosyncrasies and acts of insanity. 'One man's nightingale is another man's owl' and Joan was not my nightingale. Sadly, she died a horrible death a year later in a style befitting someone dedicated to booze and pills. She, under the influence, jumped out of a tow truck and was run over by the wheels of her own car that was being towed to a repair shop in S.F.

The whole story for another time.

A Punishing Wife, George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller, A Winner

'Wha'd I do?' The Princess would stop talking to me, sometimes for days at a time, and I didn't, often times know why. So, my plaintive question was, 'Wha'd I do?'

After a day or two or three of keeping me in the fucking deep freeze, the Princess often responded by saying, 'If you don't know what you did, what is the point in my telling you?' Just like being hung from a tree, left swinging in the fucking wind and not knowing why you're being hung.

But a day or two in the deep freeze, being punished for reasons that I knew, were as common as an old shoe. Silence was the Princess's weapon of choice. Sadly, she passed that piece of bullshit DNA onto the kids. More of a WASP perfected trait than one belonging to Jews, Irish Catholics and Italians. Don't know about Muslims and Buddhists.

What comes into our non WASP heads comes out of our non WASP mouths. Head to mouth without a filter serves a real purpose. It clears one's head of garbage. Prevents personal ulcers. However, constantly saying what you think contributes to giving others ulcers. No problem.


~And up pops George Soros with my letter to a friend:

 Dear Mike,

Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to share your political thoughts with me, plus your comment about the very smart and very, very greedy, chubby, George Soros.

Soros is, in my view, a stock market operator who is morally bankrupt. Many years ago Soros controlled a small, public company called Crystal Oil. Soros had a guy named Bill Goff running it. My experience with Goff was that he, Goff, was basically not trustworthy. He was a stock market front runner and dealt in inside information while EVP of Sabine Royalty, an oil and gas company out of Dallas.

Fortunately, thank God, Goff really, really, disliked me. To give your life balance you need people who like you and people who dislike you. People pleasers who want everyone to like them are very boring, innocuous to say the least. It took about 10 likes to offset Goff's virulent dislike of me. Gotta have balance in my life.

Ashley Priddy was the CEO of Sabine, a company that his Father started. Ashley was as straight as a die. Wouldn’t say 'shit' if he had a mouthful. To those who knew us, Ashley and I were indeed the odd couple.

Being a consultant to Sabine and a friend of Ashley, a wonderful human being, was a great privilege for this lower case bronx jew. When Ashley was hospitalized at the Stanford Hospital we often went to dinner at the Fish House in Palo Alto. We laughed like crazy through dinner. I sponsored, aka paid for, a surprise roast of Ashley with about 100 in attendance, in the Thanksgiving Tower about 9 months before Ashley, sadly, passed away from cancer.

After Ashley passed away the BOD of Sabine made Goff the CEO of Sabine. On a trip to NY/Wall Street, Goff bragged that he was going to leverage up debt free Sabine to prevent a hostile takeover so as to secure his job.

When I heard this I phoned Robert Priddy in Wichita Falls and on the board of Sabine and told him of Goff's insider trading of Sabine shares and of Goff's leveraging plans for Sabine. Robert Priddy was very proud of Sabine and not about to let Goff make Sabine his toy. Robert went berserk and a short while later Goff was gone from Sabine.

So, one night I'm out to dinner with my friend Stanley Druckenmiller telling him this sordid tale. Stanley, who was with Soros at the time, asked me, as a favor, to tell the story to Soros with emphasis on Goff's inside trading. So I did and Soros's reaction was, to quote Georgie Porgie, 'What's wrong with that?'

While in Soros's office his head trader rushed into the room, bragging about a hugely profitable trade in Texaco shares based, absolutely, on inside information which she got from her boyfriend who was big time at Solomon Bros.

BTW The famous Soros English pound trade was Stanley's idea though Soros did expand its size. Soros is in my view, a very, very smart, exceedingly rich, BUM, in caps. Today, he would be in jail. And after Soros saw the light, replaced Goff, Crystal Oil became a very profitable investment for Soros. 

Yeah, the Princess insisted on 'being her own person' and also fought mightily to make me 'her person' as well.

Soros proved that sometimes the difference between being right or wrong is that you're surely wrong when you get caught.

The Glory Of Being 90 Years Old...Told In A Brief Style

• When you're 90 years old, not only has your dick died, but your underwear is all you need for your urine and feces tests.

• Getting old is a 'lay up'. Being old ain't for wimps or sissies. Every kvetch chases you to Google and borderline hypochondria.

• Not needing a cane, a walker or a fucking motorized wheel chair is big.

• Not falling on my ass, for good or bad reasons is cause for celebration.

• Wanting to sing out 'Hallelujah' when a name comes to mind easy.

• Being 'regular' is big. Having to eat at least four prunes a day to get there is almost disgusting.

• Just being able to swing my leg high enough to get on a LeMond spinning bike feels like an accomplishment. Doing intervals even more so.

• Out of respect for other driver's lives never, ever, driving on a freeway is a must.

• Wondering if some homeless guy will get my $5,000 Brioni suits; where the fun was in the buying, not in the wearing.

• 70 year old memories of drinking boiler makers in Hawaii during a stop-over en route to the States. We were on a 6 hour pass from the hospital ship. Got really in the bag, literally fell flat on my face in a pool of water returning to the ship. We had planned to have steaks. Whiskey and beer chasers did, however, win the day.

• Ecstatic that the marbles in my head are still rolling around.

• Working with a great trainer twice a week. 30 minutes and 12 lb weights are my emotional and physical limits.

• Happy to be, to quote Billy Crystal, "A hoarder of memories".

• Knowing that percentages in all endeavors are the game. Gotta keep shoveling cause you know that under that pile of horse shit, there has to be a pony somewhere.

• Living by Bum Phillip's, a football coach's dictum, that 'You can fail all the time but you're never a failure, til you blame someone else".

• Optimism energizes. Pessimism drags you down.

• Knowing, to paraphrase Dean Martin, that when I get out of bed in the morning that it's as bad as I'm going to feel all day.

• Like any good Jew, I always forgive but never forget.

• Looking, sometimes staring, at knockout young women and wondering what possessed me to get married at 22. Not too fucking smart.

• Realizing that too much of my life has been severely influenced by letting my little head run my big one.

• Remembering getting picked up in Paris, drunk out of my fucking mind, by two hookers from Mozambique. Going back to the Meurice for a ménage a trois. Woke up, rolled, and not remembering anything about the ménage but sure that it was great.

• Finally remembering to put my keys, sunglasses and wallet in the same place has added real time to my life.

• Recalling the El Al flight attendant asking me, when I asked for my 4th drink in the first hour, on my way to Israel, "Another one?"

• Loving the line from Fiddler on the Roof, 'Those were the days my friend. We thought they'd never end.'

• Busted on my lower case bronx, jewish ass, but with zero regrets and optimism about the next 4.6 years.