Oats, Corn and Schlongs

Nothing goes straight down, not even the stock market, except a 20 year old's schlong right after getting laid or right after masturbating. An old man's schlong has permanently turned into a dripping faucet always pointed down, limp. Check that out with Willie Nelson....

Wonder of wonders, Ole Orange Hair aka Donald Trump's, hair is turning blond and he's becoming a man of God. Insisting that he is a man of only the truth. It's like thinking that the Pope will become a Muslim.

Commodity traders, unless they quit early when they are ahead, die busted on their asses and rightfully so. They become powerless over their own bullshit. They really believe they can predict prices.

Ezra Taft Benson, the Eisenhower Secretary of Agriculture, was my inadvertent commodity mentor. A most important lesson that I learned from Secretary Benson is to never try to outguess government action and its impact on markets of all stripes.

In the early 50's I was slopping hogs, milking cows, feeding cattle, losing my ass while trying to become an Iowa farmer. Talk about pissing into the wind. It was a joke that I took seriously. A Bronx Jew, trying to farm in Iowa, was on its face, one giant step to being fucking stupid. Strike three came quick.

It was the early 50's and oats were selling for .65 cents a bushel with a government support price of around .80 cents. I was all over that like a pig in shit. Not having ever dealt with a commodity broker I went to a broker's office and with 10%, 6.5 cents down, bought 2 carloads of oats (5,000 bushels of oats).

I was like a blind hog finding an acorn.Oats skyrocketed to $1.20/bushel. I decided that it was time to sell. Not knowing that the broker was a phone away and I could call the order in, it was three days before I got to the broker's office.We were putting up hay...couldn't afford to gamble that it was going to rain and raise hell with the hay crop. By then oats were back in the 90's but it was still one hell of a trade. I had put up 6.5 cents per bushel and got back about .35 cents. Now I was a genius. All you had to do was ask me.

Being a self proclaimed genius prompted me to get into the corn business.Corn was selling, below parity, for around $1.55/bushel and I bought 3 carloads (6,000 bushels) and watched corn erupt to the upside to around $2.50/bushel.The guy at the grain elevator in Swillpale, Iowa (aka Swaldale) who I told that I was going to sell, dissuaded me by showing me write ups predicting $3.00 corn.

To a Bronx Jew the written word is the fucking gospel, so I didn't sell.

Eisenhower had been elected President, appointed Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture who gave me my most memorable commodity trading lesson.

Benson proclaimed that he only believed in price supports in times of disaster thereby causing a fucking disaster.Corn went down the limit every day for days and I was barely able to get out even. In those days a 1/4 of all workers in the US were in agricultural related work and the Secretary of Agriculture had a ton of clout. And clout me he did. A great inadvertent mentor.

Never fucked with the commodity business again.When I became a stock broker and started following oil prices I did so and still do, with morbid fascination. A market prone to manipulation was great for Marc Rich but not this Jew. 'Competing' with Marc Rich would be like having a death wish.

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Easy Come, Easy Go

'Blow it out your barrack's bag.' was the Army substitute for, 'drop dead', 'you're full of shit' or just plain, ordinary 'fuck you'. 

 

The Army had, in common with today's geeks and nerds, its own language and phrases. In the Army there was an element of in your face honesty that is pretty well hidden in civilian society.

The path to a medical education is to live a long time. I get to have doctors explain the kvetches that come with living longer than planned. And while it ain't peaches and cream it is often laughable.

The first bike crash that landed my sorry ass in the Stanford Hospital ICU  for a week put me on the road to becoming a borderline hypochondriac and getting a PhD in Heart Problems. Google became my lord and master.

Being in an ICU of a teaching hospital like Stanford means having a bunch of fresh faced interns scaring the hell out of me every time one of those self anointed geniuses stopped by to check on me.

Having bounced off the bottom several times, optimism and resilience are in my DNA. But those doctors wired me for sound.

This one doctor hammered me daily with my having 'aortic stenosis'. Since I didn't have my iPad to google 'aortic stenosis ' and cater to my budding hypochondria I was fucked until I finally asked him what the hell aortic stenosis is.

Pretty simple: Aortic stenosis is when the opening in the aortic valve which feeds blood to the heart has closed significantly, forcing my heart to alway be in over drive. Bye, bye stamina. Not enough blood to my schlong and hard earned blood to my heart.

Then after my stay at Stanford and one more bike crash (At 88, I was still macho-pacho and still the same at 91 3/4) a terrific VA/Stanford cardiologist, Dr Patricia Nguyen, told me that I needed an aortic valve replacement if I wanted to continue to fuck the actuarial tables of the Social Security system and keep getting my VA disability benefits for any meaningful period of time.

As a schmuck who thinks that he can beat any physical problem with fitness I turned Dr. Nguyen down for several years. But now, having the energy and stamina  of a wet noodle, I have decided to go to the TAVR procedure where they insert a catheter into your groin with a ballon containing a new aortic valve and push that sneaky, slippery, little mother up to and into your heart.

Using some kind of hocus pocus or black magic the healthy valve replaces the el sicko valve with a healthy valve. At the end of the day TAVR (Transcather Aorta Valve Replacement)is a great substitute for open heart surgery. 

God bless Dr. Nguyen, her TAVR running mate Judy Baer and the rest of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System's great people.

Actually, I want to die in an airport or on an airplane, preferably the Concorde. Reminds me of another Army expression, 'I hope you die with a hard on.'...The ultimate curse.

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Sex And The Married Italian Man

The 'Should we go bankrupt or public?' of the olden days has now been replaced with 'Should we go bankrupt or raise private equity money'? 

If there is an after life, then God willing, I will come back as an Italian. Italians seem to have a looser view of life than guilt ridden Jews or Irish Catholics. There are no Jews and Irish Catholics without guilt. 

My closest friend, for many years, until he left this world for the next was an Italian: Roland Biancalona.

Roland always maintained that his 'happy marriage' was held together by him having a mistress on the side and that cheating on the mistress as well, meant keeping his wife and mistress content.

In later years, when Roland was having trouble getting it up more than once or twice a week he conned his wife Dottie by asking Dottie if she was as disinterested in sex as he was. Her answer, "Yes" took the pressure off of him to try to accommodate Dottie, his mistress and occasional screw with his dying schlong. 

The amazing thing about Roland was that he was short, fat, partially bald with crooked teeth and he still charmed women right out of their clothes, as any true, blue, Italian man is expected to be able to do.

He loved to travel SAS and seduce those leggy, knockout, blond Scandinavian flight attendants. How he worked-in a Scandinavian airline to fly back from Italy was amazing. 

One time Roland,on a flight back from Europe, volunteered to give a flight attendant a tour of the Bay Area.

He then invited the great looking, Swedish flight attendant to dinner at his home and to spend the night. Suffice it to say she accepted the invitation which sent Dottie, his wife, out the roof. 

Worse, at about 1:00 AM, Dottie heard some noise downstairs and discovered Roland having sex (aka screwing) the flight attendant. For Dottie, who was a Catholic that converted from Methodist, divorce was not an option. She 'repaid' Roland years later, by having him cremated rather than divorce him.

He had always told me that he wanted a burial near his Father who he adored. Dottie wanted him to burn in hell.

Roland was, with one exception, a devout Catholic. He went to church every week. The exception was taking communion which, apparently, requires confession. He wouldn't go to confession and tell the priest that he had been fucking anything that would hold still. Roland said that the priest would insist that he stop his dalliances. No chance. No confession.

Make no mistake. Roland had a heart as big as all outdoors.We ate lunch three or four times a week, mostly at the North Beach Restaurant, talking about chasing pussy, stocks and laughing like crazy. Roland's upbeat personality was contagious.

Personally, I have just crossed another one of life markers. Am now 91 3/4 years old with a dripping schlong and aortic stenosis but loaded with optimism while looking for a new career before the fat lady sings.

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