Booze & Broads

Making extra bucks in the service as a GI, while not leaving the base, was a prime goal of mine but not easy to come by.

Bartending at the Enlisted Man's Club at Camp Kohler became my goal. 3.2 beer was as hard a drink as you could get. Drinking 6 bottles of 3.2 beer would get you to the latrine often to take a whiz but without getting a buzz on. 3.2 beer tested your bladder capacity. At 20, bladder capacity is minimal.

As a patron, the club seemed sane. As a bartender it was a madhouse. I made 50 cents an hour and all that I could steal or drink but I was too fucking slow, as a bartender, to steal. Everyone was screaming at me for their fucking beer. Who had time to even think of stealing or drinking? Also the Sergeant in charge of the mad house kept his jaundiced eyes on the bartenders' hands to be sure that the money went into the register and not their pockets.

I think the beer cost 10 cents a bottle. A carton of Chesterfield cigarettes did cost 50 cents. Civilians had a hard time getting cigarettes so I would send cigarettes to 'my girl' who, sadly for both of us, became my wife after the war.

American Tobacco, during the war, took the color green out of Lucky Strike cigarette packages and launched a campaign entitled 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War'. Chesterfields were my choice of coffin nails. I never did understand why 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War' became a slogan for American Tobacco.

Smoking, drinking and hallucinating about women were the GI's 'hobbies' of choice. Newspapers were unavailable and who the hell cared. No headphones for music or even individual radios. We lived in a soldier's world. Life was easy and uncomplicated. Sleeping while standing up and leaning against a wall wasn't a challenge. Easy done.

It seems like no one had ever heard of alcoholism in those days and our sex lives mostly consisted of 'wet dreams' or 'jackin off'. I often wonder when I turned into a 'sincere drinker' and then an alcoholic. For me it seems that my addiction really started with the WWII 'going away parties' for the guys leaving for the service. No girls, just a bunch of teenage guys getting roaring fucking dunk and loving it.

AA taught me that booze can be as big an addiction as drugs or sex, if you can get the sex.

How else could a dumb Jew from the Bronx feel totally worthwhile? Drinking gave me a leg up. Certainly not from listening to the 'Princess' who had an exquisite memory of every asshole thing that I ever did and I did plenty of them. The good things I did were instantly snuffed out of the 'Princess's' memory bank. I always felt worthwhile while sliding into the bag.

In AA a standard line is that your best day drunk wasn't as good as your worst day sober. Now that is, for me, pure bullshit.

I always like to talk about a fabulous menage a trois that I had with two hookers from Mozambique in Paris. The only problem is that I don't remember what happened but it had to be fabulous because I ended up with zero dollars in my pocket.

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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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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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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.

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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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