Mind boggling Trump. A reprise.

OLE ORANGE HAIR

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

I am certain that he saves his memory for people he can still use or sue or preferentially, in thinking about himself. 

Some years ago a friend at G.E. Pension Fund decided that it would be a good idea that The Genius and I should meet. So I put my fat lower case 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. So we met in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel for lunch. His Royal Highness, my G.E. friend and me, The Ultimate Jet Setting lower case jewish Dummy.

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 the ultimate in frustration having been treated rudely and with zero respect 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). 

After lunch, I got back to my hotel and called Trump's office. I told his assistant that I wanted to see Trump immediately. His assistant told me that his calendar was too full for me which almost pushed me out the 10th story window. I pointed out that I had taken a serious trip 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 and he would see me.

The "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 about ADD when he was in the third grade that 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 says 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 a NYC restaurant a few years ago. He was standing under a bright light fixture which made his hair shine ORANGE.

P.S. Without GE Pension Fund and the education and financing they provided, Trump would have been another very smart failed RE operator who earlier had needed his Daddy to bail him out. Brains and all...but those are two other Trump stories left for another day.

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Constipation

Living in the slow lane in a rehab facility. God forbid that you miss having a daily bowel movement.

It is a place where you are told that you are destined for a near term fucking heart attack if you go 4 days without a fucking bowl movement.

A suppository is an explosive pill, inserted in your ass. Something like a minor operation. Okay for someone else. It is a distasteful 'device', invented by a sadist, designed to virtually explode the fucking contents of your stomach. Born of optimism.

Ahoy! all you guys with a little age on you. You are staring down the barrel of a fucking walnut size gland called 'the prostate'. It causes everything from cancer to growing large enough to prevent you from urinating (aka pissing).

Can't piss? The next step is a tube inserted through the penis past that over sized walnut into your bladder. Hocus, pocus your bladder starts draining into the 'pouch' attached to the tube. A 'no fun at all' addition to your lifestyle. Please note the importance of the stomach to middle aged and older guys and to a lesser extent, women.

Wishing for old age has the spirit of masochism. My doing the the Transcatheter Aorta Valve Replacement (TAVR) procedure at age 92 smacks of masochism. The procedure was an unqualified success. The unexpected side effects not so much.

Life after the TAVR is better than the alternative of no life at all, at least that's the conventional wisdom. Since no one has convinced me that looking up at the grass is better than looking down at the grass I'll go with 'looking down'.

Meanwhile, life here at the 'rehab ranch' is a challenge, fighting everything from boredom to constipation. Getting old can be fun but being old ain't for wimps or sissies. But optimism brings sunshine living right up front.....this is Noah talking about the flood.

TAVR, Shrinking Schlong

'HITLER SURVIVES 5 ATTEMPTS TO INSERT A CATHETER INTO THAT SMALL WEENIE OF HIS. HAVING SURVIVED A LOBOTOMY, THE PAIN MEANT NOTHING TO DER FUHRER' ...Der Spiegel 1940

'You have stenosis of the aorta', a young, fresh faced doctor at Stanford Medical Center told me on a brief, 18 hour visit to the ICU after a bad bike crash 4 years ago. Stenosis? Never heard of such a thing. 

Went directly to the universal center of all medical knowledge, 'Google'.

Want to become a borderline hypochondriac? Easy done. Just Google every ache (aka kvetch) or pain you have. Also, doctors at a teaching hospital specialize in scaring the hell out of you so I went to Google.

It told me that stenosis of the aorta just meant that the opening of my aorta was shrinking and my stenosis was moderate. Dr. Patricia Nguyen, an outstanding cardiologist at the VA and Stanford, tried to get me to agree to go into the TAVR program. 

Google or Dr. Nguyen was the question. 

Hell, I was cycling 20-25 miles 4-5 days a week, working with a terrific trainer, Jen Donat, twice weekly and with a resting heart rate in the mid to low forties. Felt as healthy as a pig in shit. Google was my natural choice.

One more really serious bike crash a few months later, a week in the VA Hospital, 30 days in a rehab center, including almost 30 days of being unable to walk. That was the end of cross country biking. So much for Google, last month I had the TAVR.

Hospitals and rehab facilitates do have a gift they keep on giving: Urinary Tract Infections.

Putting a catheter into my schlong hurts.Taking it out hurts only a little. Putting it back in hurts a ton. Trying unsuccessfully, many times with each new catheter, is ass shaking if not earth shaking in my small mind and small penis.

I do believe that my miniscule schlong shrinkage with old age is accelerating with each insertion of a catherer.

BTW the TVAR procedure was 100% successful.

Up The Down Staircase

A 'minimally invasive procedure' is a procedure that is like a minor operation. Both are something that someone else has. My 'minimally invasive procedure', on Tuesday, is a result of a bum aorta (heart) valve.

Breathing hard after sex was fun. Breathing hard after walking 150 steps, while a laughing matter, ain't fun. But it is one whole hell of a lot better than the alternative of not breathing at all. 

Or so I'm told but not by people who have died. They ain't talking.

Between the Transcatheter Heart Valve Clinic (Now there's a mouthful.) at the Stanford Hospital and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System (Another mouthful.) a 'minimally invasive procedure' procedure has been prescribed for me by outstanding medical professionals. GE Health Care testing equipment was enormous help in getting medics to their conclusion.

TAVR is the acronym for Transcatheter Aorta Valve Replacement, another mouthful and the name of this 'minimally invasive' procedure. A catheter with a new aorta valve attached is inserted in the groins and guided to the heart where, through some magic hocus pocus, the defective valve is replaced with the new valve.

Didn't Google TAVR because using Google for every kvetch was making me into borderline hypochondriac.

In the olden days open heart surgery was used. Nothing minimal about that. At 92 or even younger, open heart surgery sounds like a death defying operation. It ain't 'minimally invasive'. Check that out with Bill Tichy.

Being a curmudgeon does not prevent me from recognizing the efforts that Judy Baer, Dr. Patricia Nguyen, Dr. William Fearon, Zoe Magee and Dr. Giacomini have all made on my behalf. And the countless number of technicians as well.

A few recovery days in the hospital and this Old Bronx Jew (92 in a few weeks) will be ready to tear life up one more time. Can't wait to stop breathing like a stuck hog bleeds when I take a whiz. Just standing still shoots my heart rate to bad. Taking a whiz is an exercise in stamina.

Making money, riding my stationary bike for 45 minutes, being able to walk several miles, lifting weights, learning Spanish and telling someone to suck eggs out of small holes slowly or take a flying fuck to the moon are all on my agenda.

Which includes traveling to the Big Apple, London and acting like a big shot one more time. Maybe King Kong, aka John Myers, will take me to Rao's so that I can hob nob with gangsters and bankers.

Yeah, I am looking forward to living and doing with optimism and a drive for serendipity for another bunch of years. Living on the edge too.While my dick has sadly died, the rest of me is raring to go.

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'God's Banker' Archbishop Paul Marcinkus....A Partial Reprise

"Bernie did you see those Swiss guards when you checked into the Vatican?  And you know my secretary Mauvi don't you? Well, Mauvi and those Swiss guards get paid. Don't bring me deals that don't bring me income."

The only thing the Bishop didn't say was 'Are you fucking stupid or what?'

This was my second visit to the Vatican to promote a deal to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. I knew that the Bishop was big time but later found out how big. The Bishop was all over the newspapers. And not in a good way. But I didn't read newspapers in those days.Would have cut into my drinking time. The choice between reading newspapers or booze inhalation was a no-brainer.

The Bishop was a priest from Cicero, Illinois. Very personable, had huge hands, smoked like a chimney (Pall Mall, unfiltered or a pipe) and who was as competent to run the Vatican Bank as I would have been.Which was not at all. The Bishop didn't have the necessary paranoia. I am paranoid but not very fucking smart.

In the beginning the Bishop and I had one thing in common...smoking in size. The Bishop was 6'4" and a good looking guy. It was hard for me to think him abstinent.

Lloyd Hand, former 'greeter' for Pres. Lyndon Johnson and DC lobbyist, had introduced me and a colleague to the Bishop and I had stayed in touch with the Bishop. Fed my misplaced fucking ego to say that the Archbishop who ran the Vatican Bank and I were friends.

And so down the tubes went a proposal that I made to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the President of the Vatican Bank and Governor of Vatican City. I had developed a personal relationship with the Bishop over a 10 year time span and he had agreed to see me regarding an oil and gas royalty deal.

The deal was dependent on successful wildcat drilling to generate income. Turned out that the guy in charge of the drilling couldn't find his ass with either hand much less oil or gas with drilling equipment. He didn't find even a fucking mouthful of oil or gas.

But the Bishop proved that he did have some common sense (aka street smarts) and he turned down the deal which turned out to be a bad bet on a bad concept. But I stayed in touch with the Bishop.

At one point, after the Bishop was back in the States, the Knights of Columbus had been looking for him and they called me, a Jew from the Bronx, to find out where the Bishop was.

The Bishop was a terrific guy. He loved playing golf and I would send him, from time to time, golf books and boxes of golf balls. He would "try" to convert me. He never gave up though I told him that I was born a Jew and would die a Jew. He spent his last days in Sun City preaching in nearby communities.

He was "for decades, one of the highest ranking American prelates to the Vatican serving Popes John XXX III, Paul VI and John Paul II." But at the end of the day, he was in many ways a simple learned priest, from Cicero, Illinois without a financial background. The Bishop also lacked the deep seated cynical trait that is so crucial to being a successful money manager.

Sadly, he became embroiled in two scandals where one principal, a banker named Calvi, was found hanging beneath a bridge in London. Calvi had been a friend of the Bishop and was convicted of fraud. That association cost the Vatican Bank over $200 million. Previously, the Bishop was involved with a shadowy character named Sidona, with Mafia connections, who died in prison in Milan after drinking a cup of coffee laced with poison. That friendship cost the Vatican tens of millions or so it is said.

At one point the Italian government indicted the Bishop but he confined himself to Vatican City for a few years until the indictment was dropped.

The Bishop was, for me, a marvelous man who added significantly to the richness of my life and I cried when I learned of his death from Mauvi, his secretary. It was rumored that he was "banging" Mauvi who was not my cup of tea. She was, for me, a lovely woman with the sex appeal of a sore ass.

And no, in the twenty five years of knowing the Bishop I never did a deal with him as being his friend became the paramount feature of my relationship with the Bishop, may he rest in peace.

~

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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