Tuesday, July 28, 2015

George C. Scott

'$50 says that it's George C. Scott!!!'

Sitting, pre-lunch, at the bar of the North Beach Restaurant in San Francisco in 1968, with my good friend Roland Biancalana, I saw two guys at the end of the bar belting 'shots and beer' like there was no tomorrow.

Having just returned from a trip to NY with my kid Joe and having taken Joe to see the play Plaza Suite with George C Scott, I recognized Scott. So, I said to Roland, who poo pooed my observation, '$50 says that it's George C Scott'.

Roland got off of the bar stool and started walking towards Scott. I screamed at Scott, 'Don't tell the son of a bitch who you are. I'll split a $50 bet with you.'

Naturally Scott had no interest in $25 and told Roland who he was. Scott and his friend continued on their awesome drinking binge, virtually inhaling 'boiler makers'. And I was fucked out of $25.

But I have always felt an attachment to Mr. Scott even if he didn't know or care that I was alive.

The most fun part of the trip to NY, was hearing Joe, at the play, in a shocked voice say, 'Pop, the guy is putting his hand up the woman's (Maureen Stapleton's) dress.' It was the first, last and only time in Joe's life where something sexual surprised or shocked him.

Joe lived with a gal while they were both students at Utah State In Logan, Utah. Their landlord, a devout Mormon, threw them out when he learned that they were living in sin. I was drinking and smoking up a storm in those days and went crazy when ash trays were nowhere to be found in Logan. And unless you had a bottle on your hip, booze was out.

A memorable trip. Princess enjoyed my pain and suffering.

Getting my Purple Heart in the mail was no big deal. With or without the Purple Heart I have always felt blessed that I was given the opportunity to serve as opposed to Ole Orange Hair (aka Donald 'Elmer Gantry' Trump) with his four student deferments and one (the last one) medical. All hat, big mouth, no cattle.

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Monday, July 20, 2015

Donald Trump - A Reprise

If it is true that one of the three most dangerous people in the world is a Jew with an attorney, then Donald Trump, Ole Orange Hair, should be Jewish.

Law suits plus a mouth bigger than the entrance to a subway station spewing pure nonsense aka bullshit are Trump's specialties.

In my golden days, the 90's, Cipriani’s at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in the Big Apple was my favorite stomping ground. It had a low ceiling and was loved by women who had bodies of Auschwitz survivors, boobs by Dow Chemical and lips puffed up with Botox.

Dressed by Bergdorf Goodman, the women, single, divorced and married thought they looked beautiful. I thought they looked like shit. As phony as three dollar bills.

Trump, a big guy, would stand under the lights in Cipriani's under the low ceiling. His hair piece would take on an orange glow. You sort of expected Gypsy Rose Lee to show up and do a burlesque routine with the Man With The Orange Hair. What a fucking pair that would have been to draw to.

Me and Donald Trump aren't even kissin' cousins and I would be stunned, one surprised Bronx Jew, if Ole Orange Hair would even remember me.

He most certainly saves his memory for people he can still use, sue or in thinking about his wonderful self. He is a fabulous person. Just ask him.

Absolutely the King of Shameless Self Promotion. Even with that big gut of his escaping from his custom made Italian, French or British shirt.

Trump was well on his way to real estate bankruptcy (circa early 90's) when Dale Frey, John Myers and David Wiederecht of the General Electric Pension Trust took that narcissistic, egomaniac in hand and saved his business ass.

Taught him how to leverage his name into something with a franchise value and acquire real estate interests, at no cost to him, along the way. Ole Orange Hair now places billions of dollars on the value of his name.

Trump had a well deserved reputation of a low cost builder. GE Pension had taken possession of what was then known as the Gulf Western Building on the corner of 59th street and Central Park West on which the Pension Trust had a mortgage.

The fucking building was vacated because it swayed in the wind. David Wiederecht and Trump came up with the notion to build a hotel around the remaining stripped down framework. Trump had no money; his father had saved his ass from personal bankruptcy a few years earlier.

Dale and John then came up with the idea to have Trump take charge of the rebuilding process, build a hotel around the stripped down framework and Ole Orange Hair could earn an interest, out of the profits of the hotel, which he did. (Suzie Mills, the manager of the Trump International Hotel, deserves enormous credit for the success of the hotel).

This has been Trump's formula for the bulk of his ensuing success; putting his name on all those fucking buildings. Put up zero money and earn an interest in the properties. If the deal fell flat then Trump sued the owner to have his, Trump's name, taken off the property.

While the hotel was being built David Wiederecht thought that it would be a good idea for The Genius and I to meet. So I put my fat, lower case, bronx, jewish ass on a airplane and flew to New York for lunch with the self proclaimed genius.

Flying to N.Y. for lunch was something I did with some regularity which highlights what was a major stupidity problem of mine. I really thought that I was a big shot. Time has proved that to be a major fucking piece of bullshit. Trump and I met in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel for lunch. Mr. Wonderful, David and me.

In those days, Trump "controlled" the Plaza and there was a regular parade to our luncheon table of his acolytes, genuflecting for Trump who was in hog heaven. Trying to have a conversation in between Trump's pontifications to his worshipers was impossible.

By the time lunch ended, I was wired for sound with frustration at being treated rudely and with zero respect. And that, after what I considered to be a major league effort to get to The Big Apple (I was no longer drinking and getting blasted on airplanes). A total of 10 ridiculous hours, coming and going, in a fucking tube to have lunch with an overweight, self consumed, obnoxious suit, Master of The Universe.

After 'lunch', I got back to my hotel and called Trump's office. I told his assistant that I wanted to see Trump again, immediately. His assistant told me that his calendar was too full for me which almost pushed me out the fucking 10th story window.

I pointed out that I had taken a serious trip from California to see him and that he absolutely owed me the courtesy of 20 minutes of his time. She phoned me back and told me to get my ass over to his office right away and the Great One would see me.

Our ‘conversation’ could have been on Saturday Night Live.

What an arrogant, self consumed guy he was/is. He told me that once a person spoke the first five words of a sentence he, Trump, knew what the other person had to say and that he, Trump, didn't have to listen any further.

After a few more minutes of this bizarre ‘conversation’, I told Trump, that if they knew what ADD was when he was in the third grade, he would still be in the third grade and that his mind had the staying power of a moth on a hot light bulb.

But history does say that Trump is a bright guy if a boor as well. I never had the desire to ever see him again though I did spot him again in Cipriani's. Standing under a bright light fixture, hair shining ORANGE with the air conditioning blowing his wig up. Bizarre.

He looked right through me. Shit, I couldn't, wouldn't do him any fucking good so he didn't 'see' me. My experience with Ole Orange Hair was highlighted by Trump's total rudeness to anyone he couldn't use.

At a Thanksgiving Day viewing from the then not quite completed Trump International Hotel, Trump with his then wife Marla and Marla's Mother, hosted a friend of mine with my friend's wife and four kids. One of my friend's kids was a knockout 18-19 year old daughter who, in front of his wife etc., hit on the 19 year old.

Some years ago Ole Orange Hair, at a lunch with a friend of mine, asked my friend why no one liked him, Ole Orange Hair.

P.S. Without GE Pension Fund and the education and financing that Dale, John and David provided him, Trump would have been another very smart failed RE operator who earlier had needed his Daddy to bail him out. Trump was fighting bankruptcy of his Atlantic City gambling emporium with interest on a loan coming due. His Daddy bought enough chips to cover the interest and didn't cash the chips in.


~

Monday, July 13, 2015

Too Late To Die Young, Google Schmoogle, A Bie Gahzint

91 and FOS aka 'Full Of Shit', literally and absolutely. 
 
That was me last week. Having aortic stenosis and forcing a bowl movement is, in my view, an invitation to a heart attack. That may be true even without having stenosis.

Pushing and shoving a hard rock out my ass was plenty fucking time consuming and uncomfortable. (Pain is for wimps and sissies. Uncomfortable is a word, more better.)

Trying to function with the hard rock in me was damn near impossible. I felt like I was plucking at a daisy or dandelion. Now the great event would happen, now it wouldn't. Breathing hard was the order of the day. Traipsing to the john to grunt and groan for 18 hours was what I would have wished on Hitler. 
 
Though I live in 800 square feet so I didn't have to traipse very far. And without a wife to whine to.

Google has created a whole new class of Real and Borderline Hypochondriacs. A genre that I left after one Google too many. If you have an ache, pain or feel uncomfortable, Google it.
 
Google 'constipation'. You will, I believe, be amazed at the number of web sites devoted to descriptions and cures of constipation. I was brought up on 'castor oil' which cured everything. A little nausea or the need to vomit came along with the 'castor oil' but no fucking overload of information. Prunes and/or a fresh fruit smoothie loaded with blackberries are the current 'cures'.

In Korea, right after WWII, riding in a jeep became an exercise in sharp jabs in my lungs every time the fucking jeep went over bumps. It was really annoying. Not having Google to tell me what was wrong with me, I went out on sick call.

The very bored Army doctor did  the stethoscope routine, tapped me on the back and said "You have pleurisy." "Will it go away?", I asked. He said,"In a few days." 
 
No intellectual curiosity here. I was 21 and didn't care about what pleurisy was. The pleurisy leaving was all that counted. It did go away, came back a few times and then disappeared for good. Later learned that pleurisy is an inflammation of the lining of the lungs and I lived many years without that overload of information.

How did the expression 'boobs' evolve from 'lungs'? 
 
When we were kids in the Bronx, well endowed girls had 'big lungs'. Now they have 'big boobs'. But then in those really Golden, Olden Days, we also played stickball, stoop ball and pitched pennies against a wall, when we had the pennies to pitch. We were too relaxed to wonder why we had an ache or pain. Complaining was for wimps and sissies.

Google, schmoogle, a bie gahzint.

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