92 and 5 Months, Chomping At The Bit

It ain't easy to become a Body Attached To Pills.

First you have to be either growing old or be old. Every month, looking down at the grass, counts so 92 and 5 months really counts. Also gives you a taste of being a kid who was always 'going on' something.

As you grow older the quantity of pills increases. These days, my pills total 7 and include a water pill, stool softener and a 'heart pill'. That so I'm covered from head to toe. It doesn't include the stuff I shoot up my nose for my sinuses.

At 92, you measure your life in months. When the appointment person at the VA made a mid May appointment for me I thanked him for his optimism on my longevity.

Due in a major way to Jim and Sheila Ochowicz plus Jen Donat who inspired me to continue when I felt like slacking off of being a fitness freak. They made me feel special all the time for being old and active. Even I did look, at 89, look ridiculous, pot belly and all, in tight cycling clothes, expensive or not.

Not updating my Facebook is a no brainer since I currently look like an emaciated pill.

Up, Up and Away in My Flying Balloon still looking down at the grass.

The King of Insults

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.

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.

~

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.

~

'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.

~