Rant #3,179: Peace, Love and Understanding

This past weekend was an exhausting one, even though I didn’t do very much of anything.

What I did do is to watch my mother the entire weekend, and while she appears to be able to do more than she had been able to do a few weeks back, it remains an exhausting task.

She gets up, eats the breakfast I prepare for her—juice, coffee and usually some cake or cookies, because I have been told that at this stage of her life, to give her whatever she wants—and then she goes into the big chair in her living room and sits there basically for the entire day.

I try to engage her in conversation, which sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

I asked her several times if she wanted to play Scrabble, or go out on the deck to catch some rays; she declined each time.

She complained about the room being too cold, and sometimes, it has to do with the air conditioner being on—which I shut off because she wanted it shut off—or it had to do with the sliding door in the living room being open to let in some fresh air—which I shut if she wanted it shut.

All the while, the other day, it was 83 degrees in the house, and while she was cold, I was so warm that my sweat impaled me to the couch I was seemingly sitting on the entire day.

A lot of times, when I could engage her in conversation, it was fun, and we spoke about everything, from the stage of the weather to the type of monitor I use to watch out for her at night.

On the latter subject, it really is a miracle device.

Where once you could only hear the person you were monitoring, now, these devices come with a visual monitor, so you can not only hear them, you can see them—and you can also talk to them simply by pushing a button on the device.

My mother was up and down a good part of Saturday and Sunday evenings—which I saw and heard through the monitor--so I did go down to her several times to try to get her back in bed at night.

She sometimes has a hard time in discerning what is daytime and what is nighttime, so I have to direct her back to the bed when it is nighttime, whether it is 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. or 4:30 a.m. or 6 a.m.

On Saturday night, I saw she was not in the bed, and I went to look for her in the pitch black of night.

“Larry, I am here,” as I turned around, startled, and saw her sitting on the couch, the one that I called home for a good part of this past weekend.

“Mom, it is the evening, and you have to go back in the bed.”

“I am eating cookies,” and I saw that, in fact, she was eating Oreo cookies when she should have been sleeping.

“Mom, when you are done with the cookies, you have to go back into the bed,” which she did, and while she didn’t sleep through the night—she got up pretty regularly to go to the bathroom, which at this point, she can pretty much do herself—she did sleep a good part of the night.

Last night, as I was dozing off myself, she was up and down and up and down some more, necessitating me to steer her back to the bed.

But the days were OK, highlighted by my family and I eating dinner with her in her part of the house.

It was only fast food, but my mother really enjoyed whatever I brought in for her—Arby’s and Taco Bell—and she chowed down on the food as if it were 1999.

At this stage, my mother sleeps away a good part of the day, but on the other hand, she really has progressed, physically, since coming home from the hospital a month or so ago.

Her vital signs are excellent, she can move around a little bit on her own, and she is quite cognizant at times.

We have help for her coming in during the week, and she really has a good team of three women who absolutely know what they are doing, having many years of experience of working with the elderly.

But it becomes a little dicey on the weekends, as we have no help coming in, and it is up to us to care for our mother.

I have to say that my mother is in good spirits, but she does often ask us, “Why did this happen to me?”

And honestly, I have no answer for her.

God often works in strange ways, but with help, my mother can almost rise above it, or at least deal with it, as best as she can.

It is a difficult time for her, but I see how she has progressed since coming home from the hospital, and she really has been doing so much better in her own and familiar environs.

Honestly, I do not know what the coming weekend will bring us, but whatever happens, we will be there at the ready to help her.

She helped us when we were babies and not able to help ourselves, and it is now our obligation to help her when she can’t help herself.

Life is cyclical, and we are more than happy to do what we do in her time of need.

Rant #3,178: Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Television is a wonderful medium.

Decades before the Internet, this was our go-to electronics device to learn about our world, to be entertained, and to engage us as a nation, and sometimes engage us as a world.

But television can also be a dangerous tool when not used in the correct way.

It can hypnotize us, babysit us, and make us into walking, talking robots if we believe everything we see and hear on television.

Remember, television is also called “the boob tube,” and there is often good reason for that appellation to stick.

And that is what I am going to talk about today, when television — this wonderful device — becomes not only stupid but downright dangerous.

Has anyone seen the latest commercial from Lincoln, the one that shows the young mother with the young kid in the back of the car?

The theme of the commercial is that you can relive the joy you had as a kid when you rode your bicycle by driving a Lincoln car, which has been taken to ludicrous—and dangerous—levels within this commercial.

The young mother is driving her Lincoln, and then she daydreams about her younger days piloting her bicycle.

(Daydreaming is bad enough when you are driving a car, but it gets worse.)

Flash back to her time as a kid riding her bicycle … and she is joyously having fun, and then—

She rides her bike without having her hands on the handlebars, doing so without a care in the world.

OK, a lot of kids do this, but then the commercial gets into the ridiculous mode as it flashes forward to the woman not as a child, but as a parent driving her car with her daughter in the back seat.

She then puts two and two together—her riding her bike as a kid and her piloting her car as an adult—and she lets go of the steering wheel, and the car goes just wherever she wants it to go without her holding onto the wheel.

So the kid in her and the adult in her have coalesced, because not only don’t you have to have your hands on the handle bars to guide your bike, but you don’t have to have your hands on the steering wheel to guide your car!

This is an insipid assumption because it gives the appearance that the car goes by itself without the driver’s absolutely necessary participation.

Of course, anyone with a brain knows that so much more can go wrong with a car when the driver is not fully engaged as compared to riding a bike without your hands on the handlebars—

Including the fact that you have a young child as a passenger in the car—it is only you with the bicycle.

This commercial is totally irresponsible, trying to interest younger, female drivers in a car make that has been geared to older male drivers for generations.

And it can be a deadly commercial if anyone tries it and gets in an accident because they were not fully engaged in driving their Lincoln car.

The feature is in the car not as a “fun” device, but to keep drivers in the correct lane of traffic; it has nothing to do with driving your car without holding onto the steering wheel, as it is portrayed as in the commercial.

Look, I have the same navigation tool in my “new” 2020 car—no, this tool is nothing new, so why trumpet it now?--and it has the potential to be a dangerous feature in your car if not used correctly.

I have tried it on an open road, and yes, it does keep you in your lane, but the question is greater than what it can do—

Why use it in the first place as a “fun” feature?

In what circumstances would you use such a feature for “fun?”

I mean, you supposedly have to keep your eyes on the road—and your foot on the gas—when you are using this feature, so what are the plusses of having such a feature in our car to use for “fun?”

Why is this feature being marketed for “fun” purposes, rather than as the safety feature that it really is?

Not used correctly—for example, as the woman in the commercial is using it—it can be a “deadly” feature, and somehow, I doubt its developers had that in mind when they came up with the technology to support its inclusion in cars.

I don’t get it.

Are we now marketing cars like toys for children?

A car is a great convenience to have, but used incorrectly, it can be a deadly one.

Why play up such an inane use of this feature over other features that are in there for the safety of the driver and his or her passengers?

This is the world we live in today, where irresponsibility is accepted and rewarded.

Something to chew on as we go into another steamy weekend.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday—

And please keep your hands on the steering wheel of your car!

Rant #3,177: Time Is On My Side

… And now Mick Jagger turns 80 years of age …

It is like I said the other day, we, along with our past icons, are all growing older, and we are all growing older together.

But Sinead O’Connor is not growing older with us.

She died yesterday at age 56, and with her, you almost have to wonder why she died at such a relatively young age.

Her immense talent was overshadowed by the fact that she had severe mental and psychological problems, and since no cause of death has been released, you really have to wonder.

The current hot phrases when someone dies are “died suddenly” and/or “no cause of death was given.”

When you see those phrases attached to an obituary, with no further details, it leads me to believe that there is a bit more to their death than we are being told, and I don’t have to spell out those details to you; I think you can figure them out yourself.

Let’s talk about life …

My mother is doing better, at least physically.

Whatever scars she has from her stay in the hospital are either healed or getting there quickly, and she is moving around quite a bit better than she had been just a few weeks ago.

But her dementia has gotten noticeably worse, and if anything gets her, I think it is going to be that, not whatever is rolling around in her body.

Yesterday, she was dancing with her attendant, who also takes her outside to do some walking.

At the suggestion of a counselor, we have gotten my mother a book to write her thoughts in, and I have read some of them, and her memory is pretty much intact when it comes to things from 50 or more years ago—

Anything current, she cannot remember a thing.

She often does not know when it is daytime or nighttime, when to sleep and when not to sleep.

It is sad, but she is doing the best she can—and she has told all of us, flat out, that her time has not come yet, she has plenty of life left in her, and that she believes that she can live to 100 years of age.

Knowing my mother, I would not put it past her, I really wouldn’t.

She is not the mom of, say 1976, but she still has a lot of vim and vigor to do exactly what she said she wants to do, and that is to really defy the odds and reach her age goal.

I know that toward the end of his life, my father had just about had enough, and he passed away when he had reached his limit.

My mother is quite different; she does not feel that she is done yet.

She often asks me, “Why did this happen to me?” and quite frankly, I don’t have an answer for her.

We now know that it was a progressive decline, one that took many months to fully come out and show itself, but again, if former president Jimmy Carter can live in hospice with brain cancer for more than five years, I would not put it past my mother to be our very own “Jimmy Carter.”

Sure, that is a lot to ask of her, but if she feels that she still has a lot to live for, then why not?

So much of our population is living to 100 years of age and beyond, that it is not that unusual to hear of someone who is 102, 107, even 112 years of age—so different than it used to be when people generally died in their 70s and 80s.

Of course, living to such an age must come with a good quality of life while getting to that age; if the quality of life is not there, why live so long?

But while my mom might not be as sharp as she once was, with the right people around her, her quality of life is high, so why shouldn’t she live as long as she wants to live?

Can you imagine Mick Jagger living to 100 while he sings “Time Is On My Side?”

Well, my mom can do it too, if that is what she wants to do.

Rant #3,176: Cool It Now

This has been one hot summer, and I think I read that July has a chance to be the hottest month on record.

I can pretty much take the heat, but the humidity is what gets me every time.

It greatly impacts my allergies, and once my allergies are all over the place, so is my entire body.

Thank God for the air conditioner, which I think it one of the great inventions of the modern age.

(Now here is my segue way to what I really want to talk about today … )

I wonder if the accused Gilgo Beach mass murderer had air conditioning in his house?

He certainly had other things in there besides air conditioning, as we have heard that he had some type of underground vault where he stored some 200 guns.

The sound-proof room—which was discovered earlier this week as authorities were digging up the accused murderer’s home—was a walk-in vault with a thick iron door.

This discovery leads to a load of questions.

One obvious one is that how did authorities not know about the cache of arms that this guy had in his house?

Was this group of arms not registered?

Earlier, they had found 90 firearms in the house that apparently were registered and legal—shouldn’t anyone having that number of firearms in his possession send up a red flag to authorities to begin with?

And the next one is also an obvious question—

How could his family, and primarily his wife, not know anything about this?

I am not saying that she and the kids are culpable in whatever this guy has been accused of doing, but you live in a house, his wife is married to him for a number of years, and you have no clue that there is this massive area in your house where guns are being stored?

Either she is the dumbest woman alive, or there is something fishy here.

Look, the accused murder had lived in this house his entire 59 years. He had been married once before, and divorced.

Perhaps he built this thing in the time between the first marriage and the second, but something is just eerie about someone living in the house and not knowing what appears to be anything about the very house she lived in.

Of course, she evidently didn’t know about her husband’s predilections, either, so maybe it isn’t too surprising that she didn’t know about this secret room.

I just don’t get it, though, for whatever that is worth.

And now we have this poor house, which looks like a bomb hit it—and looked that way before anything of this unfurled—just sitting there, in the possession of his numb wife and kids.

I said right away that this has a chance to be a modern “Amityville Horror” house, one that gawkers visit, leading to e neighborhood that is destroyed by its presence.

I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking this way, as Nassau County has now put police around the house, trying to keep away people that have nothing better to do than gawk, throw garbage and destroy the neighborhood when they “visit” this house as part of some type of eerie sightseeing tour.

Such behavior destroyed the house in Amityville to the point that not only was the house rebuilt, but the street name was changed so people could not locate the house … but that was only done years after the presence of the house changed the neighborhood forever.

I remember all the times I was walking on Merrick Road before I got my driver’s license in Massapequa Park—located right next to Amityville--and being stopped and asked directions to the house in Amityville.

I darn well knew where the house was—it was literally a few minutes or so away from where I lived--and I always gave people who stopped me on the road the wrong directions, because I always thought that this exercise was so stupid and such a total and complete waste of time that those fools who asked me for directions deserved to be pointed in the wrong direction.

And when I went to college, I knew a few people who actually went to school with the Amityville killer, and they said that if you had asked them years earlier about who they thought the most likely person to do such a horrible thing was, they would have told you that it was the guy who actually did it years later.

Now that I am all riled up talking about all of these murders, I think it is the right time to get back to the air conditioning—

To cool down a bit …

My body, my mind, and my soul.

Rant #3,175: Easy Come, Easy Go

We are all getting older, and that goes for all the generations, in particular the Baby Boomer generation that I am part of.

Us post-World War II babies are getting up there in age—at the high end of the generation, we are in our 70s and at the low end, we are in our mid-60s—and we are now all moving into Social Security and retirement age.

And while each generation has had their own idols to swoon to, Baby Boomers look at those that our generation put up on a pedestal way back when, and some are growing older with us.

This entire Rant was inspired by the birthday of one of those teen idols … whether you loved him or you hated him, he was there, he was ultra-popular in his time period, and, well, he just turned 80 years of age on this past Saturday.

I am talking about Bobby Sherman, who had a multitude of hits in the early 1970s … and probably the best head of hair on the planet.

Sherman had been toiling as a singer about a decade prior to his teen idol years with little success. He was the house singer on ABC’s “Shindig” music program, and even when that failed to ignite his singing career, ABC knew that they had something there … they just had to match the material with the singer and most importantly, with the right TV show.

So in the late 1960s, Sherman took his talent and his now long hair to the network’s “Here Come the Brides,” and he was on his road to success as one of the top three teen idols of the day—

Davy Jones and later David Cassidy—also products of television exposure and over-exposure—were the other teen idols of the time, but Sherman was a little older than the other two, had been around the block more than Jones and Cassidy, so he easily competed with the two younger upstarts.

During the post-Beatles period, Jones had been the top teen idol while with the Monkees—along with his own two other major stars of the time, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits—and his solo career never really took off—his “Brady Bunch” period aside--so it was Cassidy versus Sherman in the early 1970s, with no clear-cut winner.

Based on my sister’s wall in her room—where she hung pictures of her faves from all the teenybopper magazines of the time—Cassidy was the clear-cut winner, but personally, I never got into “The Partridge Family” thing … as a young teen growing up during that time, beyond Jimi Hendrix and the other “hip” acts that I liked, if I had to listen to Top 40-geared music and acts, it really had to be Bobby Sherman.

And look at his bevy of hits that he had during that time period:

From 1969 to 1972, he placed 10 Top-40-ready tunes on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including “Little Woman” (#3); “La La La (If I Had You)” (#9); “Easy Come, Easy Go” (#8); and “Julie Do Ya Love Me” (#5), earning him several gold records with picture sleeves highlighting his good looks, and his hair.

After “Here Come the Brides” was canceled, Sherman was on just about every variety show that there was, and starred in one or two forgettable TV series.

But after 20 years in the business, Sherman had his sights on other mountains to climb and to conquer.

The first time that he put his other talents and interests on display was when People Magazine had a feature on him in the early 1970s that did not concern his musical career, but that he had built by himself a miniature replica of Disneyland, something that took him years to complete.

And then later in the decade, he shocked just about every teenybopper who had his picture on their wall by leaving show business altogether—and becoming a certified emergency medical technician based in Los Angeles.

This was no joke, no try for extra publicity … Sherman simply had had enough,
and left to pursue his dream job.

And since that time, while he has occasionally performed—he was front and center in the “Teen Idols” tour with Davy Jones and Peter Noone in the 1990s—he has pretty much left show business behind.

So now, for him to turn 80—and the only one of the three teen idols he was up against to still be with us—really is an extraordinary accomplishment, and it received a lot of coverage on social media.

We are all growing older, and so are the people that we admired when we were kids, so for Bobby Sherman to turn 80 years of age is certainly a benchmark for all of us, and particularly the Baby Boomer generation.

Yes, somewhere down the line, if she is lucky enough, Taylor Swift will also turn 80 years of age, and that generation that adores her will probably say the same thing that I just did about Sherman, that reaching that life milestone definitely shines on all of us, reflecting that we are all getting older as time goes on.

So happy birthday to Bobby Sherman, a guy with a lot of talent, perseverance and patience who ultimately did exactly what he wanted to do with his life, and is sill with us to grow older in parallel with us.

And yes, I saw a recent picture of him, and while his hair is shorter--and whiter--than it was 50 years ago, he still has THAT hair!

Rant #3,174: Same Old Song

I hope you had a nice weekend.

I pretty much did, with one incident kind of putting a fork in the weekend for me, but more about that later.

It has been pretty warm in these parts—not like it has been in other parts of the country, but hot enough for me, with every day in the mid 80s to mid 90s—so this weekend, we did what you do on hot summer days, we barbecue and we swim.

We did not do the barbecuing, but my brother-in-law did, so we went to his house and had a pretty relaxing afternoon and early evening.

The food was good, the company was good, and although I was really tired after a previous night where my mother was up just about all evening, I stuck it out and had a good time—

Helped by the fact that I took a nap before we left, which was nothing but a short snooze after my sister took my mother for the remainder of the weekend, but it did help.

I was bushed by the time that we went back home in early evening, but I made it through the day pretty well, kind of on fumes by the time we returned back home.

And then yesterday, before my mother arrived home from my sister’s house, my wife and I were able to go swimming in the backyard pool, something we have been able to do this summer with a bit of regularity.

After last year’s complete fiasco with the pool—where we could not get the green out of it no matter what we did and how much money we pumped into it—this year has been much better—not perfect, but much better.

Changing over to salt water, the pool is much cleaner, and the upkeep is much easier.

Again, I am not going to say that the pool is perfect, but it is as clean as it is going to be, which means clean enough so we can use the pool as a big bathtub outdoors, no scrubbing but we are able to sit in it and take in the rays—with sunscreen, of course.

The incident that I referred to before that was the only negative of this past weekend was another situation at the local Wendy’s drive-thru, the most incompetent spot on the planet, or at least in my neighborhood.

I went to get food for us on Sunday evening, and my wife and son wanted Wendy’s, so there I went.

I got to the drive-thru, placed my order, and I thought everything, for once, was going to be hunky dory.

The woman manning the drive-thru told me how much the order cost, and I got out my money, plus as exact change as I could do with the coins I had in the car.

I went to the window, and that is where the “fun” began, as it always does at this particular site.

The assistant manager—or who I think was the assistant manager—read off what I ordered as I prepared to give them my money—with as exact change as I could give them with the change I had in the car.

He read off the order, and the woman taking my order had left out one order of chicken nuggets, so although I was ready to give my money to the cashier, I had to recalibrate a little bit now that the order was corrected.

The woman who originally took my order took my money—I gave her $40 in two $20 bills plus 50 cents in change for an order of $34.49—and that should have been that.

But then the cashier gave me back my change, and only gave me the coins—and to many of them—and not the paper money that I was due to get back.

“Where is my full change?” I asked, and there was no answer. “Where is my money?”

No answer, and then I admittedly got a little angrier, but for good reason.

“You know, every time I come here there is a problem with the order, a problem with the change, and why do I have to go through this every time I come here?”

Another woman working there came to the window, and flat out asked me, “Why do you come here anyway?”

“Because I live near here,” I replied.

“You should go somewhere else!” she chided me, which really infuriated me, because that is very bad customer service.

I still did not have my money, and the manager came to the window.

“Look, every time you come here you are nasty … you have to work with us,” she told me. “Did you get your order yet? Once you get your order, you will get your money.”

“But why was I just given the change? Where is my money? I would not be so nasty in your words, if I would have gotten what I wanted, and then I could already be home.”

The manager walked away from the window nd the restaurant proceeded to take their time in bringing me not just my order, but my paper change … and they were making comments inside the restaurant about me, very nasty in nature, which I replied to from my car, until they shut the window on me so I couldn’t hear anything … and during all this time, a line had built up behind me of at least 10 cars, so their taking their time bringing me my order was only creating problems for them once I left—

But I wasn’t ready to go, as they still had not brought me my order or my change.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, they brought everything out to me, including my change.

The manager greeted me at the window.

“You don’t have to report us each and every time you come here.”

(I have filled out the online form about their service on numerous occasions because they have forced me to do this because of their lack of service.)

“Well, I would not have to fill out that form if your staff wasn’t so inept.”

“Here is what we are going to do for now on—when you drive up to the window, you ask for me, the manager, to take your order. Do not give your order to anyone else but me.”

“Sounds good to me, and I will do that … and I am not going to report the restaurant today for what happened.”

She then apologized for the worker who told me to go to another restaurant, which I thanked her for, and I guess now we are on some sort of truce—but don’t tell me that I am the only one to report them for their inept behavior—those reports do get to the higher ups, and I do see new workers in the restaurant each time I come there.

So, the solitude of a nice summer weekend was brought down by this one incident … but I kind of brushed it off, listed it as complete and total incompetence on their part, and simply cherished the time I had at the barbecue and in the pool as making this a good and relatively relaxing weekend for myself and my family.

Now, the work week begins, and everything resets with my mother back home and me on the spot for seemingly everything.

Tally-ho, and away we go!

Rant #3,173: Three Lock Box

I did something very interesting earlier in the week, a process which should have taken maybe 20 minutes that stretched through almost an entire morning, mainly because of complete incompetence doled out by a certain major bank that will remain nameless.

I emptied out my mother’s bank safe deposit box, which I don’t think she needs anymore.

This entire exercise was prompted by a letter we received in the mail attesting to the fact that she owed more than $500 on the box rental, even though she originally opened the box under a special plan for certain customers that gave her the box for free in perpetuity—a decision since rescinded by the bank on seemingly unknowing customers.

Anyway, I went to the bank branch that I thought the box was in, but it was the wrong branch, so I had to go to another branch—not anything terrible, with this other branch basically cross town.

When I got to the branch containing the box, the bank was busy, and I had to wait for someone on the floor to call me into his office to explain what I needed to do.

A bank associate called me into his office, but as I was getting out the letter that I had received about the box, he picked up the phone and started talking to someone, then he hung up the phone and said he would be right back, “because I am the only one in the bank that can do this,” whatever “this” was, I have no idea.

He then literally vanished.

After about 10 minutes of waiting, I stood up and peaked over to an adjoining office, where another bank associate was on the phone,

I sat down in total disgust, and I figured I would give the original bank associate another five minutes to return—which, by the way, he never did.

Finally, the other associate was off the phone, and he stood up and told me over the office divider that he could help me, that the other associate “got busy.”

So I went over to his office, showed the associate the letter, and told him that I wanted to close out the box and that I would fight the fees addressed in the letter.

He looked up the account, and to my surprise, my name was actually on the box account—something I did not know—and that this should speed the closing of the box.

“Do you have the keys?” he asked me.

“What keys?” I replied.

Evidently, the box had two keys used to open it, and I had no idea that keys were needed to open the box.

(I once had a safe deposit box in another bank, and all I needed to open it up was a code—nothing to do with keys at all.)

“You need the keys to open the box up,” the associate told me. “If you don’t have the keys, you are going to have to go to court to get an order to open up the box, and we are going to have to get someone in here to break open the box.”

I was perplexed, but I told him that I would be back with the keys, even though I had no idea where the keys were in the house.

I went back to the house, and gingerly asked my mother if she knew where the keys were—and Jiminy Cricket!, she had not forgotten, and knew exactly where the keys were!

I rushed back to the bank, had to wait again to speak to someone, and then, after about 20 minutes, someone came to help me—

Or so I thought.

She determined after about 15 minutes of trying to get her computer to the account that the machine was not working, and that we had to go up to the teller area to complete this action.

She took my two forms of ID--my drivers license and a debit card—and I didn’t see those two forms of ID for the next hour or so.

She admitted that she needed help in opening up the account, which involved getting the bank manager over to assist—and then I asked them again about the letter I had received, and that I was not going to pay the amount it said that the account owed.

“Oh, you don’t owe us anything, we owe you!” the bank manager said as she fiddled around with the computer.

“Then why does it say that I owe several hundred dollars on the account?” I asked.

“Don’t pay attention to that, we owe you money.”

“Then why do you send out such a letter?”

“Oh, I didn’t send out the letter. I admit, the letter makes absolutely no sense.”

“I am not accusing you, personally, of writing the letter, but how does a major bank like this send out such a letter?”

“I don’t know … why don’t you write your own letter and complain about it?”

“Because, I don’t have the time to write such a letter, that’s why … and how about the box and my two forms of ID?”

The bank manager told me that everything would be taken care of in a minute, which really meant about an hour from that point—and in the interim, she gave me the cash for what the bank owed me, and I still have no idea why both the letter was sent nor why they owed the account money.

Anyway, everything was finally completed on the computer, and now the moment of reckoning had come … to finally get the box, open it, and see what was in there.

We went to the area where the boxes are held in the bank, and I was told to wait there until the associate could open the door for me—

The problem was, in the interim, the associate decided to get some other work done, and the minutes ticked away as I was waiting.

Tick … tick … tick …

Finally, after about 15 minutes of waiting, she finally opened the door to the box room, and we entered—

The first problem was that she could not find the box number. She looked and looked and looked, and could not find the number.

Finally she found it—it was on the lower level of where the boxes were—and then she put in the keys along with a bank key, to open it up.

It would not open.

No mater how she put the keys in, the box would not open.

This went on for at least 10 minutes, and then she said that she had to get the manager again to help us.

I was so frustrated at this point that I plunked my butt down on a portable stairs that they used there to get to the higher boxes, taking both the weight off my feet and off my brain as my frustration was building.

Finally, the associate and the manager came back, and lo and behold, the manager could not get the box open, either.

But after a lot of jiggling the keys, she finally got it open, and I was given the box to go through and take out its contents.

That was the fun part of this entire escapade, as I found in the box no valuables, but what I would call “family heirlooms,” like my grandparents’ citizenship papers and a certificate my father received when he completed a cooking course—in the Marines probably more than 70 years ago—

And a mysterious key … more about that later.

I took out everything, pushed a bell so the associate could come back and take the box from me.

She finally handed me back my IDs—they had not been in my possession for about an hour, exposed so anyone could see it on a desk in the teller area—and I walked out of the bank, finally, with a ton of paper and a key that I had no idea what lock it was designed for.

I went home, and showed my mom the key … and she also had on idea what it was from, either.

It is sort of an old fashioned key, a key that was probably made decades ago.

Since I have no idea what lock it opened, I surmised my mother kept it in the box as a memento … I do believe it was a key that was used in my father’s old butcher store on Delancey Street in Manhattan, a store that closed about 60 years ago or so—

Or at least that is the story that I am going to tell others when I show them that key, and it is truly a family heirloom no matter what lock it actually opened.

So there you have it … a supposedly easy exercise that once again, unnecessarily turned into torture for me.

I must have that perpetual black cloud over me, and I just cannot get rid of it, no matter what I do.

Have a good weekend, I will speak to you on Monday, and hopefully, there will be no more boxes to befuddle me now or in the future.

Rant #3,172: Heaven Help Us All

What do you make of this Gilgo Beach murder suspect?

It seems that all roads now point to him as the likely killer of at least three prostitutes—don’t you just love how the media refuses to use that term, calling them “sex workers” or “escorts”—and possibly a fourth one … and since there were others murdered and dumped in the area, he might have just been a serial killer of about a dozen victims.

And also, don’t you just wonder why everything infamous always seems to happen or somehow revolve around Massapequa Park?

The notorious and the infamous seem to coagulate in the Long Island area that I have called home for around 50 years—

The first person that I think brought attention to this area was Christine Jorgenson, the American service member who raised a worldwide stir when she became the first transgender person back in the 1950s, and used that celebrity and notoriety to become an entertainer?

Flash forward to when I became a resident of Massapequa Park in the 1970s and 1980s, and you had Jessica Hahn, the supposedly innocent church secretary who was embroiled in a sex scandal that brought down the empire of Tammy and Jim Bakker, and who later posed nude in Playboy Magazine?

How about the entire “Long Island Lolita” saga, where Joey Buttufucco had an affair with an underage prostitute named Amy Fisher, and when Fisher became infatuated with her older lover, she ended up shooting his wife, Mary Jo—and then all hell broke loose in one of the most infamous yellow journalism sagas in modern history.

And perhaps for not a specific single misdeed—but for an accumulation of them—we have the Baldwin brothers, who were born in Syracuse, New Yolk, but moved to Massapequa Park as children, growing up here, and going through high school here—led by oldest brother Alec, who has become the poster boy for “what not to do right and still make millions from it.”

(And as an aside, one of the Baldwin brothers actually went to high school with the accused serial killer! He posted the high school photo of the accused murderer on social media last week as the entire ruckus was unfolding.)

Yes, there are some absolutely regular Joes who have grown up here or are somehow attached to Massapequa Park that have gained nothing but positive notoriety, like Jerry Seinfeld, the Stray Cats, Elliot Easton, Helen Shaver, and many others—and there are people like me, who moved from New York City to Massapequa Park and had good lives, nothing more.

But why does Massapequa Park spawn such notorious characters as I have previously mentioned?

I have no idea, I really don’t.

I live about five minutes away from the accused Gilgo Beach murderer, and like where I am, that area is pretty much a hardscrabble one, with a mix of modest and nice homes lived in by a mix of blue and white-collar workers and their families.

Is it something in the water?

I wouldn’t know, since I don’t drink water, or at least I don’t drink water from the tap.

Is it something in the air?

I don’t know, Massapequa Park residents breathe the same polluted-by-the Canadian-wildfires air as everyone else does.

Is it in our upbringing?

I really can’t say, although the accused killer has never lived in another house in his entire life, growing up in the same house he now owns.

And speaking about his house … how could his wife not have known anything about what was going on with him—not necessarily the murderers he is accused of committing, but of other bizarre behavior he must have exhibited over the years?

Can you be so blindly in love with someone—and so close to someone—that you kind of overlook your spouse’s major imperfections?

Of course, now she has filed for divorce to almost cover her tracks, but something was awry in that house well before everything exploded—I mean, his wife and kids were out of the house for such long periods that he was able to pull all of this off?

Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

And what of these neighbors who are springing out of the woodwork, trying to get their 15 minutes of fame through their proximity to the murder suspect?

I almost had to laugh when one neighbor said that about 30 or more years ago, he had to scold the future murder suspect for looking over the fence that separated the two houses when the future murder suspect eyed his wife sunbathing on the neighbor’s property.

Was she sunbathing nude? Was she sunbathing topless? Was she simply trying to get some rays?

Look, unless he was really ogling her—and perhaps he was, but somehow, I doubt it—this is a true non-story … you men out there, you never looked at a woman sunbathing?

Please, let’s not make this horrific story worse than it is with utter nonsense thrown into the mix. We went through this once with the “Long Island Lolita” imbecility, let’s not repeat the same nonsense again.

Massapequa Park … where art thou?

Rant #3,171: Stand!

So what do you make of this actors’ strike?

We do know that coupled with the writers’ strike, it is going to hold up new TV series and new movies from being shot, and on TV, lead to more reality shows and the like to be put in the scripted shows’ places.

But if the actors, in particular, are looking for general public sympathy for their cause—which revolves around protection of their images from artificial intelligence and an increase in pay and residuals via their latest new cash cow, streaming services—they are losing it by putting higher-profile stars as the out-front leaders of the strike.

Sure, they say the same blather that we have heard in the past—they aren’t doing this for themselves, but for the probably nine of 10 actors who don’t make a living and for future actors, who will deserve to have their rights in place as they move into the field.

But you can’t have Jane Fonda yelling through a bull horn screaming about actors’ rights.

You can’t have Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford and the like talking to reporters as they march the picket line.

(As an aside, since the strike is about actors’ rights revolving around AI, Ford’s likeness in the latest “Indiana Jones” film was altered by the use of AI, so him screaming about his rights is like the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?)

And you can’t have Fran Drescher screaming about her rights as a common worker, leading the charge.

Collectively, these actors have more money than Fort Knox in their possession, have revenue streams through their popularity that us common people can’t even comprehend, and in a post-pandemic economy where most people wonder how they are going to feed their families—and with weather disturbances rocking the country to the point that people don’t even know how they are going to survive—well, using these people as your spokesmen really doesn’t cut it.

Again, I know that probably nine out of 10 actors are waiting tables somewhere looking for their big break.

Others have regular gigs on TV and the movies, but can’t make ends meet.

Yes, those are the people that should be leading the charge here, trying to sell this to the public, but instead, we have what amounts to multi-millionaires looking to grub even more money into their coffers.

It reminds me of the baseball strike in 1994, which effectively shut down the season, and the permanent damage it did to the popularity of the sport.

You had multi-millionaire players marching the picket lines, and then you had the Detroit Tigers’ Lou Whittaker, a very good player who really had absolutely no clue about what a strike actually means and how such a strike relates to the public.

He came to the picket line in a limosine, and marched the picket line wearing a full-length mink coat, and was festooned with other high-priced baubles—including jewelry—while he held a placard basically saying that he was little more than a paid slave.

Well, fast forward to 2023, and when Dresher shouts out to the masses that she is a worker that needs to be paid more and more and more money than she and Fonda and Pitt and Ford already have, you kind of lose me to your cause.

Drescher was in my first grade class at P.S. 165 in Flushing, New York, a hardscrabble neighborhood of white-collar and mainly blue-collar workers way back 60 years ago.

She has evidently no connection to her earlier roots, and doesn’t understand that yes, she is the president of the Screen Actors Guild, but no, us common folk don’t share her concerns as we scrounge to pay our bills.

There is a disconnection with the actors and the general public, and we can live without their craft as they argue about money, and ways for them to make more of it.

And remember, many of those news reporters covering this strike are themselves union members, and although these news people are in a separate and different division of the union that is not on strike, you can bet their sensibilities are with the strikers, because whatever concessions the strikers get will probably pass down to them in the future … so don’t think that you are getting unbiased reporting here.

You clearly aren’t, and that is why on all the local news shows that I watch, after a report covering the strike, the talking head reminds us that some of their news staff belongs to the same union that is striking, but a different division of it that is not on strike.

They have to say that so the public does not get the impression that we are getting biased reporting here, but let’s face it: we are getting biased reporting, so we are not getting a clear picture of the strike from any angle.

As I told you last week, this is my week of doctor visits, and tomorrow, I have an early one, so I will have to skip tomorrow’s Rant and speak to you again on Thursday.

Rant #3,170: Help!

The reports of my computer’s demise were premature—

I guess.

Sorry about what happened earlier this morning, but I was having technical issues with my computer—

And if you are a regular reader of this column, you know exactly what those issues were.

I could not get the computer started this morning.

I booted, rebooted, but it simply would not work.

Finally on the 11th try—count ‘em, 11—I finally got this thing going.

As you know, this computer has been up and down for about two years, and it is difficult to put your finger on what the problem is.

Yesterday, I had absolutely no problems at all; the computer started up on the first try, and I was able to go right into what I had to do for the day without any thought of the thing not working.

It does usually take from two to three times to start up correctly, but like I said, yesterday it booted up perfectly.

Today … not good, but it hasn’t been a very good day to begin with.

It started at night.

My mother was completely restless last night, and had a hard time staying asleep, so as her sole caretaker during the evening, I was running up and down the stairs several times to help her get back to sleep.

She woke up at abrupt 1:30 a.m., and as I ran down the stairs to get to her, I kind of figured out what the problem was when I got to the room.

It must have been at least 100 degrees in her room, so even though my mother had been trying to open the window to get in some fresh air—fresh air that had about 100-percent humidity in it—I insisted that the air conditioning be put on.

In her current situation, she has been kind of funny with the air conditioning, wanting it on, not wanting it on, and not fully understanding that being as she is, the use of the air conditioner is vital during these overly warm days we are having.

I basically told her that the air conditioning had to be on, I put it on, and she slept until about 7:30 a.m.—

The problem was that my wife and I were up from all of this, and I know that I probably didn’t get back to sleep myself until at least 3 a.m.

And then this morning, after all the hoo-hah with the computer, I needed to pay my respects to the porcelain god, so to speak, and wouldn’t you know it, right smack dab in the middle of my penance, my mother was yelling for help.

As I was right in the middle of what I was doing (literally), my wife went downstairs, and again, it had to do with the air conditioning, which my mother did not want on anymore.

The air conditioning is planted on a high point of the wall of her bedroom, and my wife had to stand on a chair to get to the button to shut it off—not good for someone trying to recover from a head injury, so she is a bit dizzy right now.

When she finally gets up, the air conditioning must be turned on again, period. Even with the rain finally coming down, it is really warm in the house.

I am not blaming my mother for her actions, but right now, I have to do her thinking for her, and the air conditioning must be turned on.

So it has not been a good morning by any stretch of the imagination at this juncture, but maybe things will even out now that my mother is happy and my computer is too.

Next week, I have a week of doctor’s visits, and that begins bright and early on Monday morning, so I will next speak to you on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend, and keep that air conditioning on during this severely hot weather.

Rant #3,169: Tiny Bubbles

During this rough patch in my life, and with the weather seemingly in the 90s each and every day, sometimes I go a little overboard in what I am drinking, but I do try to keep it on some level of sanity by imbibing as much water as I can.

Some days, I admittedly drown myself in soda, preferably Coca-Cola.

I love the drink, and since the pandemic and since I supposedly had COVID, I have found that my appreciation for the beverage is even greater, because I can actually taste what I am pouring down my throat as good as, or better, than ever.

I cannot explain it, but over the past many months since I supposedly had the ailment—for less than a day, maybe 12 hours, and yes, I think I was misdiagnosed—I have a keener set of taste buds when it comes to certain foods and drinks, and I can actually taste Coca-Cola at a higher level.

Some people lost their sense of taste when they contracted the coronavirus … me, if I even had it, it made my sense of taste even keener.

Go figure …

But back to water …

I actually hate to drink water, unless it is frozen or as cold as it can possibly be.

Otherwise, it does absolutely nothing for me, other than properly hydrate my body.

If I am going to drink water, I prefer seltzer, which is basically carbonated water.

I have always enjoyed seltzer.

As a kid, we used to have the REAL seltzer delivered—the one in those old fashioned thick bottles where you had to posh a metal plunger to get the seltzer out of the bottle—and that product was just so good to my taste buds as the bubbles hit my tongue.

Although a couple of companies still produce that type of seltzer, they are few and far between, and the delivery is very expensive.

(And yes, they use those old fashioned thick glass bottles, too.)

So instead of the REAL thing, I drink the much more accessible and admittedly cheaper and not as good Poland Spring seltzer.

It is an OK substitute for the REAL thing.

Poland Spring water is the best available anyway, so using that water and having it carbonated is a plus.

The carbonation doesn’t last as long as the REAL thing, and it doesn’t hit your taste buds with the same thump as that type of seltzer does each and every time.

You probably can’t make a real egg cream—I hope you know what that is—with the Poland Primo seltzer.

Those negatives aside, it is better than any other seltzer on the market right now in my opinion, so that is my water/seltzer of choice.

And I do not like the flavored seltzers at all.

The flavor tastes totally artificial, and there is a bad after taste with those flavored seltzers, so I just stick with the unflavored one—

And I notice that many other people seem to feel the same way I do, as each and every time I go to the supermarket to buy more Poland Spring seltzer, the flavored seltzers are plentiful and just sitting there ready to be taken, but you have to really search for the unflavored variety, which probably sells at a faster rate than its flavored counterparts.

I mean, if you want orange or grape-flavored seltzer, you might as well buy orange and grape-favored soda, because I think you are defeating the purpose of buying a water drink if it is flavored, kind of kidding yourself into thinking that you are helping yourself when you really aren’t.

I will always prefer soda as a beverage—and Coca-Cola specifically—in particular during the summer.

But I know that you do not hydrate yourself when you drink soda, and I have had a couple of incidents in my life where I wasn’t hydrated and the after effects were not good.

Just this past Friday into Saturday, I had too much soda in my seystem, and until I fully hydrated myself with water, I felt a step behind myself.

Once I was hydrated, I was fine,and later in the day, I could even have some soda mixed in.

So if I have to drink water, it has to be seltzer, period.

(I just love those tiny bubbles!)

Rant #3,168: Bend Me. Shape Me

Whether we remember our dreams or not, we all are dreamers.

We all have dreams each night, but we probably don’t remember much of them.

I don’t, either, but I know that I dream a lot, and lately, with all that has been going on in my life, I have been having an increasing amount of dreams that I do remember.

Most of them are bad dreams, or nightmares, but this one from last night I can’t particularly figure out.

Was it a good dream or a bad dream?

I am leaning toward the former, but I can’t put any context at all to the dream, so honestly, I really don’t know if what I dreamt was good or bad, or even somewhere in between.

Here is the dream as I remember it, and I probably don’t remember it all, so this is a kind of a highlight reel of my dream:

I don’t know what age I was or what stage of my life I was in, but somehow, I became a member of the 1960s pop rock band from Chicago called the American Breed, which was one of the first interracial rock bands of the era.

Just as background, the band charted five singles on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1967 and 1968, the biggest being “Bend Me, Shape Me,” written by Scott English and Larry Weiss, which hit #5 in 1968.

They continued on into the very early 1970s, and then the band broke up, with a couple of the members forming the band Rufus, later adding Chaka Khan to the band, so there is a definite link from “Bend Me, Shape Me” to “Tell Me Something Good,” whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not.

Anyway, I somehow joined the American Breed, but I did not play an instrument, so I was on background vocals.

I was now a member of this band, and I was walking outside of somewhere, and two people asked me for an autograph, which I gave them—

And that is all I remember about the dream.

I have no idea what the dream means, if anything … I am as perplexed as you are about this.

I have a lot of American Breed records, both LPs and 45s, but I was not consciously thinking about them yesterday, or recently, and honestly, I haven’t heard any of their music that I can recall any time recently on the radio or among the music I listen to that I have digitized.

Here are the lyrics of “Band Me, Shake Me” … maybe they will provide a clue:

“You are all the woman I need,
and baby you know it
You can make this beggar a king,
a clown, or a poet

I'll give you all that I own.
You got me standing in line
Out in the cold,
pay me some mind.

Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it's all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.

Everybody tells me I'm wrong
to want you so badly,
But there's a force driving me on,
I follow it gladly.

So let them laugh I don't care,
'Cause I got nothing to hide,
All that I want is you by my side

Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it's all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.”

I can’t find anything in those lyrics to point me in a direction of what the dream meant.

Maybe the title “Band Me, Shape Me,” as it is, defines what that dream meant.

I mean, during the past several months, I have been “bent” and “shaped” every which way due to everything going on in my life and in my family’s life, so maybe that is a clue to what the dream meant.

But to me, that only skims the surface of why I had that dream.

Why did I specifically join the American Breed, and what about that autograph?

Any thoughts?

Rant #3,167: Shine On

My wife went to the doctor yesterday to check out how her head injury is progressing, and I am happy to say that while she isn’t over the mountain yet, she is high enough up that we can finally see the other side.

She was given pretty much a 98-percent bill of health, and while she still cannot do some things and has to have some restrictions on other things, the worst appears to be over …

At least physically, but now the real fun begins.

This is a workman’s compensation case, and anyone who has been through that process knows that these cases are not easy to settle, and can take many months—or years—to come to a conclusion.

My wife’s case has its first hearing tomorrow, and we already are pretty sure that little will be settled during that hearing, as the other side has taken umbrage about my wife’s injury and what they feel they are liable for.

Without getting into specifics, they are dragging this on because they can, and that is their right to do so—

Which means there is little we can do about it … play the game the right way and see where our chips fall.

There is no way out of it, and these cases can go on and on and on without a conclusion for a long, long time.

My wife is even being prevented from going to physical therapy because the other side is arguing the case, so this dragging on of the case is really just a lot of lip service and mind games, and most importantly, it is preventing my wife from getting the full care that she needs to get back to where she was before the accident.

But really, the workman’s comp system does not add that into the equation, so while my wife is healing naturally, perhaps if she was able to take physical therapy, she would reach the top level of health quicker.

There is really nothing we can do about all of this beyond what we have already done: get a lawyer, play the game, and hope for the best.

I knew that this was going to be a struggle from the get go.

When my wife called me all those weeks ago to tell me what happened, I rushed to the hospital and was given workman’s comp paperwork that had to be given to her employer.

I went to her place of work, asked for the manager, and he took the paperwork—but not one time in the few minutes I was there did he ask me about how my wife—his employee—was doing.

It was as if I was simply the courier bringing over some paperwork about something I knew nothing about, and left the building when it was delivered.

(There, you see, I do, in fact, have courier experience!)

Anyway, to not ask how your injured employee was doing--one that was injured at your own establishment—was kind of harsh, and really rubbed me the wrong way.

It is said that employees are just numbers to the employer, and this kind of behavior backed that up big time.

So whatever the case, it all leads up to the same thing: that my wife was injured at work and the other side does not want to pony up all the insurance money due her.

And they are fighting it tooth and nail, and we are fighting back.

Happily, through it all, my wife is getting better by the day, but this nonsense is still weighing heavily on her head.

We just have to go with the facts, and hopefully, this case will work itself out.

But again, I have heard of such cases going on for years until a conclusion is finally reached, so we are prepared for this first hearing to be nothing more than the first of many hearings.

In spite of it all, my wife is much improved from this injury, and I guess that is the real light at the end of this tunnel—

And it is shining brightly, maybe not at full level, but it continues to shine on.

Rant #3,166: Pipe Dream

Another sleepness night …

Too much on my mind right now to sleep, although I did sleep for about five-and-a-half hours before I got up like this, so it isn’t like I didn’t get to sleep at all, no, no, no.

But I am up now at 3:30 a.m., so I figured that I might as well write the first Rant of the week, and it goes back to something that I did late last week on Friday afternoon.

What I did was what I wanted to for a long time, but hesitated doing because I knew that it would lead nowhere. (Spoiler Alert.)

I actually went to the headquarters of Newsday, our local newspaper here on Long Island, and with my resume in hand, sought to go directly to the headquarters of the place that I could fill one of the numerous jobs that they have been advertising as “open” for the past several months.

On almost a daily basis, they have run this large ad inside their newspaper, with about a dozen jobs at a time that they claim are unfilled.

You can send them a resume directly, or go through a site that they use to apply for these jobs, and I have sent them my resume numerous times over the past number of months, and also applied on the site that they direct applicants to.

I haven’t heard anything … and I have applied for both editorial jobs—they have many open—and non-editorial jobs—like a courier--but the only time I have heard from them is when I send a follow-up email to whatever job that I have applied for, and then they send me a form letter telling me that they have passed on me, and “good luck in your job search.”

Now, I darn well know why they are passing on me; it is quite obvious that my age gets in the way, and they refuse to hire anyone who is my age for these jobs, even though the editorial ones I fit like a glove with my experience.

But go prove it.

So, since my son works right around the corner from where Newsday is based, in Melville, New York, I figured that it might be interesting to actually visit Newsday on my way to pick my son up fron work, and see what happens.

So that is what I did … and now I really know, even though I cannot prove it without a shadow of a doubt, that they are not hiring me for any open posting, even the courier position, and the reason is quite obvious.

I got there with resume in hand, walked in, and a guard at the desk stopped me, and I told him why I was there.

He called into Human Resources, and told me to wait in the seating area for someone to come down to meet me.

He then came from behind his desk and spoke with me, first about the weather, but then we got down to the gist of my visit.

“What job are you looking for?” he asked me.

“Well, I have applied for every editorial job that has been offered, and I have not gotten a response, so maybe it is time to move on from that type of job … I already have a freelance job, where I write and edit, so all I am looking for is a part-time job … maybe the courier job would be right for me.”

“Listen, I see how old your are, You are in your 60s, I would say. I see your resume, your background is in editorial. Don’t ever give up on that … don’t go for other things if this is what your background is in.

“Sir, I applied for all of their editorial openings … they do not want me. I already do editorial with my freelance job, so I thought maybe it is time to try something different.”

“How old do you think I am? I am 71, worked for the police department my whole life, retired, went into this because I need something to do … I don’t need their benefits, but I stayed with what I know best. You should too.”

As the conversation ended, this big, burly guy, probably in his 40s, came down to meet me, and I knew that he was not from Human Resources.

“I am from security, What are you here for?” he asked me, and I told him exactly what I told the guard.

“What experience do you have as a courier?” he asked me.

“I don’t have any, but I have over 50 years experience as a driver … I can even drive my own car if necessary.”

“No good … you need experience as a courier.”

I didn’t know that a courier had any job attributes other than being able to take parcels from point A to point B, but I guess in Newsday’s mind, having never done that, I don’t qualify for that position.

As I saw that that direction was going down the tubes, I pivoted, and did exactly what the guard told me to do.

“Look at my resume … I could fill any one of the open editorial positions … the editorial assistant would be perfect for me … .”

As the security person moved away from me, I said to him:

“I was even covered by Newsday in a story a year and a half ago or so … look my name up … I was interviewed by—“

I told the guy the reporter who interviewed me, and this employee of Newsday had no idea who I was referring to.

“Don’t know the name,” he said to me.

“He is the business editor,” I said. “You must know who he is—“

“Look, I will take your resume,” he said to me as he was now fully engaged to get back to his duties, “but never come back here again unless you are called for an interview.”

So it was quite clear why this security person was sent down to meet with me, rather then a Human Resources employee—they thought they had a security problem in me, and they sent this big, burly guy down to meet with me to make sure there wasn’t a problem.

I got up to leave, and the guard said to me, ”Good luck in your job search,” which I guess is the standard line at Newsday when they don’t want anything to do with you.

Later that day, I received an email telling me the usual nonsense, “good luck in your job search,” related to the courier job, so you can bet that my resume never got to Human Resources or to their editorial department.

So I took one step forward but was pushed two steps back, and I still am sitting here with just my freelance job, which I guess is better than nothing but much less than someone like myself deserves.

However, the guard was right … stay with my background, because in theory, I have a better chance getting a job in that area than another area, even if that thinking is probably a pipe dream at this point in time.

Nearly four years since my last and probably final full-time job, I have had it up to here with news reports about how the job market is so much better now than it ever was.

What about me?

I was put out to pasture at age 62 and a half, and now at age 66, I am done like an overcooked minute steak.

And I know why, which makes the whole situation even more difficult to bear.

Rant #3,165: Truckin'

Yippee!

It’s Friday, so the weekend is coming up once we get done with today.

Yucky!

I have to get my allergy shots today, which means that I have to travel miles and miles to get them, rather than get them pretty much right around the corner like I used to be able to get them before I was forced into retirement and had to take a different health plan than what I had when I was working.

Yes, one thing does lead to another, and my five-mile (maybe that much) trip has now become a 40-mile (at least) one, all because the doctor who oversees my allergy shots—who I saw for about 45 seconds a few weeks ago, the first time I met with him in several years—does not carry my health insurance, and evidently has no intention to do so.

I thought things were supposed to be easier in retirement … but for me, everything has gotten more difficult, and I do mean much more difficult, and even getting allergy shots is now a chore.

I have been getting these shots regularly, without any even brief respite, since I was 15 years old, so I have been getting them without a measurable break for the past 51 years.

The funny thing is that I first started getting them during the summer of 1972, so today might just be my 51st anniversary—to the day--of getting them.

I should have known that over the years, this was not going to be an easy process.

Right aft the get-go, I had to take the old “staple gun” test to determine that I needed the shots, and that old test left my arms in such bad shape that during the summer of 1972, I was probably the only person in New York State who wore long sleeves to cover the damage all throughout the months of July, August and probably into September.

My arms—and in particular, my left arm—looked like I had been injecting heroin, and it was embarrassing.

And then when that was over and it was determined that I needed the shots, I went to my regular doctor back in Queens—a doctor we had used since I was a toddler--and he told me that it was silly to cone all the way back to Queens to get my monthly shots—since my father was working, my mother didn’t drive and it was taking two or three buses one way to get to his office—and that I should find a doctor nearer to where I now lived to get my monthly doses.

So based on what he said, right down the road from us, my mother found a kindly, old allergy doctor—“old” to me back then was maybe in your 50s—and he administered my second set of shots, and I subsequently made an appointment to come back the nest month for two more shots—

The problem was that during the month between my second set of shots and what were to be my third set of shots, this kindly, old doctor decided that he had had enough with life, and killed himself.

I hope that I was not the cause of his fatal decision.

Then we found another doctor, who became my regular GP, to give me my monthly shots, and he gave them to me for literally decades.

His practice was right down the block, and in my pre-driving days, I either walked there or rode my cycle there.

This doctor had absolutely no beside demeanor, but he was an excellent doctor, and I used him until he abruptly retired in the 1990s or early 200s or so.

Then I used the doctor who bought his practice, a younger doctor with a young family in tow.

Coming here from India, he was a nice guy, had great bedside manner, and even used his wife as his receptionist, so it was a real family thing, and my son and wife later used him, too.

Then a few years into his time there, he started to act very oddly, painting the walls of the office with garish colors and talking about types of medicine that I had never heard of, and berating me with all his findings and calculations and all of this information on a regular basis.

It got so bad that I swore I was going to find another doctor, and while in the waiting room, I found that I was not the only one uncomfortable with his actions, and that a lot of his patients felt the same way that I did.

And then, one morning, the top story on all the news shows was that a doctor on Long Island had been arrested for giving our various medicines—opioids—to underage patients, with the story becoming even larger when it was divulged that he was the official doctor for the sports teams of nearby Massapequa High School, and had been doling out these drugs—including oxycodon—to student athletes for years.

He was caught red-handed on a video doing just that to a young-looking, undercover police officer posing as a teen looking for a quick fix, and he was summarily arrested.

It later came out that he was abusing these drugs himself, so it now all added up.

He was sent to jail, served his time—I found out that his license to practice medicine was curiously never revoked during his time in prison, as I could not get my medical records from him, or so the then-Nassau County District Attorney Office told me--and he was never heard from again in these parts.

I am pretty sure that he went back to India, with or without his family.

That led me to find another place to dispense the shots to me, and I found a medical office just about 2.5 miles away from my house, where a nurse would give me my shots each month.

This was the office which I used until the debacle of retirement forced me to drive nearly to the Queens border to get these monthly shots.

What a long, strange trip it has been, and continues to be as I will soon enter my fourth year—third official year—of forced retirement, or semi-retirement.

I will be getting my shots later this morning, but what I really need is a shot of something else to fully get my arms around all of this, and try to make sense of a senseless situation …

And to try to understand the bigger picture, of why my retirement has been such a compete and total disaster, and with absolutely no light at the end of the abyss.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #3,164: Bad

So it happens again … and again … and again.

Jimmy Cordero of the New York Yankees was suspended for the remainder of the 2023 baseball season due to domestic violence.

This is just a terrible thing, and although the details of what exactly Cordero did to be given such a suspension have not yet been released, he had to have done something pretty bad for him to be suspended.

Cordero is the 18th payer suspended for domestic violence since 1997, and the third player with Yankees connections to be banned from the sport for what he did.

Aroldis Chapman was not a Yankee when he did what he did to his girlfriend, but the Yankees later dealt for him, knowing about his past.

Domingo German was a member of the team when he lost his mind and took it out on his then-girlfriend at a charity event in 2020, and he lost 81 games because of his stupidity.

The two later married, so I guess German and his wife put this heinous episode behind them.

And now we have Cordero, whose problems evidently flew completely under the radar with his Yankees teammates, if you believe what they say, and yes, what goes on behind closed doors sometimes doesn’t get out to anyone other than the participants.

This type of behavior is just so out of bounds … and on the higher profile plane that professional athletes reside on, while it is as wrong as if your next door neighbor participates in this type of behavior, few will know about it; when actors and singers and political people and professional athletes start throwing punches and slaps and what have you at another person—a person they supposedly have feelings for--it makes it to the grand stage, that everyone knows about it.

And that is what is going to now happen to Cordero, who is going to have to complete several tasks that MLB will require him to take before he is reinstated, with all of these tasks related to healing and understanding that what he did was not only wrong, but wrong, wrong, wrong.

Domestic violence goes on in every city and town in America, and it seems that each case that makes the news share only one thing, and that is rage from one partner to another.

Each case is seemingly so different, to a level and degree of who the participants were and what they did leading up to what eventually happened … and then, what exactly happened.

As an example, the highest profile baseball-related domestic violence case thus far has been that of Trevor Bauer, the former Cy Young Award winner, who was originally suspended for more than 300 games—later reduced to about 200 games—when word came out that he had violently assaulted his partner more than once during a series of sexual encounters.

While Bauer’s suspension is over, no team in MLB wants to have anything to do with the pitcher, and I believe he is playing overseas now … and that leads me to another point.

Violence against your partner is never right, and it is never right whether you are in the United States or elsewhere around the world.

But it does appear that other parts of the world do not look at domestic violence as seriously as we do in this country, and Bauer getting a job somewhere else in spite of his behavior—a behavior that, by the way, he was never fully convicted of here in the U.S., where much of what he did was eventually considered to be consensual—demonstrates the inconsistencies about how such acts are handled both here and around the world.

And that leads me to the next thing I have to say, which is something that will be controversial.

Of the 18 players who have been suspended by MLB for domestic violence episodes, 13 of them—72 percent—are of Hispanic origin—including Cordero--with almost all of them born overseas.

That is an important fact, and again, I do believe it can be attributed to different social norms overseas as opposed to here.

We take domestic violence very seriously in the United States, but although I do believe the world is changing and moving slowly to our thinking on this, I don’t think the movement has been fast enough.

This type of heinous behavior has been tolerated for too long elsewhere—just like it was tolerated too long here--and I think MLB will not be doing its full duty to watch over this behavior of its players if it does not acknowledge that Hispanic players are more apt to participate in these horrible acts that others—the evidence proves it.

I realize that MLB has a tough job on its hands if it actually acknowledges this, because the presence of Hispanic players in today’s game is enormous … and labeling one group more apt to do this is putting a mark on all Hispanic players, which of course is wrong.

But MLB has not done its full job in policing its players against PED use, and again, the preponderance of players found to use these drugs in recent times after the so-called “PED era” is from Hispanic players, who can buy many of the PEDs in their own home countries right over the counter.

MLB, and baseball’s Hispanic community, must address this problem, and unless the two factions do so, whatever progress it makes will be dulled because the actual facts are not being addressed.

MLB does not want to offend a large segment of its players by doing this—whether for domestic violence or for PEDs—but the time has come to do so.

As for Cordero, I hope he gets the help that he needs, I hope his family also gets the help it needs to heal … but MLB needs to be more realistic, too, about this problem, because it evidently is not going away so quickly.

Rant #3,163: Good

So how was yoiur Independence Day?

Mine was quiet, yet uplifting at the same time.

With all that has been going on with my family and I, the weekend and the holiday was just what I, personally, really needed.

Among the highlights leading me to believe that July is going to be much better than June was that I received my new computer printer in the mail, hooked it up … and one, two, three, I have a printer again!

I cannot tell you how much I missed a printer for the week or so that I did not have one.

Now, my computer feels whole again.

And then—land sakes alive—I actually went into our backyard pool yesterday!

As regular readers of this blog know, our backyard pool has been a source of major consternation the past two years, but it is finally ready to swim in, and for me, it is ready to relax in.

And that is just what I did yesterday morning.

During the late morning, it was so hot and humid, and being that it was July 4, it was time to try out the pool.

I went in there and it felt nice.

And I just sat there for about an hour, just soaking it all in.

No, my other problems have not just faded away into the mist, but at least for an hour, I was able to just relax.

I have to admit that it was a fun thing to do, just sitting in the pool with the radio on and taking it all in.

And when I went under the water, even for just a few seconds, I really took it all in.

With everything going on, this might be my family’s final swims in our pool, so each time in there is going to be memorable, and I hope yesterday is just one of many chances we get to enjoy the pool … even if we only sit there in the water and do not much of anything.

The afternoon was fine, too, as the clouds moved in, but brought little rain to our neck of the woods.

I watched baseball on TV, the Yankees versus the Orioles, and it turned out well for my favorite team, as they won the game 8-4.

It was a nice way to spend three hours or so, but that was pretty much that for the day.

We did not barbecue yesterday as I had hoped we would.

With the threatening skies, it was not worth the work to get it going, so we ate indoors as we normally would.

I kind of missed that part of the day, but you can’t have everything, and I, personally, got a lot out of the day yesterday, so I really cannot complain.

But it is back to the trenches today.

I have to work, I have to take my son back and forth to work, and I have to take care of my mother, who has her attendant coming a little bit later today.

My mother experienced a lot of aches and pains yesterday throughout the day, and she slept most of the day, well into the evening, and as I write this entry, she continues to sleep.

I have some other things to do today as we revert back to normal after the holiday, and I am hoping she has a good day.

At this point, I don’t know if her having a “good” day is even possible, but it should be as carefree as it can be for her.

And for my family and I, maybe we can get into the pool again, if only for an hour or so.

The water is so soothing, and maybe that will allow us to have our own “good” day.

With all that is going on, is that still possible?

I honestly do not know, but I am willing to do what I need to do to find out.