Rant #3,929: Mirage

Saturday was perhaps one of the most bizarre, up and down days of my entire life.

I knew that it was going to be a crazy day, but not like it turned out to be.

At 9 a.m., my son had his scheduled telephone meeting with his doctor.

He has been "seeing" this particular doctor for the last 10 or 15 years, and this physician--an older man who has been practicing for decades--really helped my son with his mental difficulties,

We knew the day was coming that he would retire--the doctor is around 90, at my own estimation--but he told us, in very sullen tones that I could barely here--that with his own health woes, he would be retiring, effective immediately.

So with that, I had to start to look around for another doctor, on a Saturday morning.

I called our insurance provider, they gave me a list of doctors, and I began to call them, with the full knowledge that it was a Saturday, and none would be available.

It is hard enough finding a doctor, but finding a doctor under this specialty is even more difficult.

So I left a few messages, and it was time to take my son to his bowling league.

It was the first time I was present to see him bowl in a few weeks, and I have to tell you, it felt pretty good to be there--

Until I got inundated with phone calls, including from my son's retiring doctor, a relative, and from the office of one of the doctors that I had called earlier.

If you have ever been in a bowling alley, you know just how noisy it is, and I had to take the calls in the men's bathroom, which I have to tell you, was just as noisy as being on the lanes.

The call from the doctor's office was the most important of these calls--which came in rapid succession, one after the other--and I told the caller that I would contact them at about 2 pm., because I obviously could not talk to them at that point.

My son bowled, he bowled pretty well, as did his team, which regained its first-place standing, and the bowling finished early, as the other team had only one member present.

It was Record Store Day, so I figured that since we finished early, I could go to my local record store, with my son, and see what they had available.

So we trekked over there, spent about five minutes in the store, I made my purchases, and we left.

We went home, and I turned on the Yankees game, hoping for a relaxing afternoon--

But with the knowledge that I had to speak to the doctor's office that called me when we were in the bowling alley.

In the meantime, did I tell you that one of my record racks buckled the other day, dumping thousands of LPs all over the place?

Yes, it did just that, and we hired a handyman we have used in the past to fix it.

He came over in the middle of the afternoon, and did part of the job, with more to come.

So while he was doing his thing, I made my call to the doctor's office, they got back to me, and after about 90 minutes on the phone, we secured a first meeting between this doctor and my son, a telephone meeting in June, which was the best we could do.

So the game is on, with the sound turned off, the handyman is doing his thing, and I am talking with the doctor's office, where I was so involved that I had no idea what was even happening during the game, which the Yankees won, 13-4.

They hit three home runs in one inning, and I was so involved that I had no idea what was going on during that inning.

Finally, at about 4:30 p.m., with that concert I told you about last week coming up, my family and I decided to do something that we hadn't done in months, which was to actually eat out at a local restaurant.

We did that--I thought the meal was pretty good--and before you knew it, it was time to go to Westbury Music Fair to see Tommy James perform.

We arrived at the venue a little early, so we sat in the car for about a half hour, and then we finally went on line, saw friends who were also seeing the show, and planned to chill out for the next two hours or so.

Tommy James remains an excellent performer 40 years after his last hit.

We have seen him countless times over the years, and his show is pretty much both wonderful and predictable at the exact same time, never wavering very much from formula--play the hits, do some banter, and talk about his book about his time at mob-run Roulette Records being made into a movie.

This time, he didn't stray too much from this formula, slowing down the arrangements on his songs a bit, but the one revelation that came out of the whole 90-minutes-or-so concert was that this movie that he has been talking about for ages is now supposedly going to be a multi-part series on one of the streaming channels.

This was originally a Martin Scorcese project, but it has been up and down over the years, and now, it apparently is on again.

So the concert ended, and we drove home--

Ready to watch Wrestlemania with my son.

The problem was one we have had for months, that we cannot get the pay per view, even though we have paid for the service on ESPN through our Verizon subscription.

So for the umpteenth time, I called Verizon about this, and for the umpteenth time, the situation had not yet been resolved.

The problem was that I used my phone so much on Saturday that I didn't realize how much power it had left--very little--and I was disconnected from Verizon because the phone had no juice left.

Since my son and I were already up, and sleep was not in the offing right then, I decided to help him fully download a video game he had purchased, and which he had partially downloaded a couple of days ago.

It literally said that we had 19 minutes to go for the full download, which turned out to be the slowest 19 minutes on record--maybe like 40 minutes--and then, before you could play the game, you had to register at a site online before doing anything.

Finally, as frustrated as all hell with just about everything that happened on Saturday, we were able to go to sleep, probably around 12:30 a.m. or so, and when I woke up on Sunday at 7 a.m., I was just as frustrated as I was when I went to sleep.

The funny thing is that through it all, my stamina level was much better--

Not up to the level it normally is, but much better.

Waking up on Sunday morning, I felt a lot of get up and go, but through the morning, the level dropped a bit as the morning turned to the afternoon.

And yes, my son woke up a little early, and we called Verizon again about this problem we are having.

It was supposedly fixed, we were able to watch Wrestlemania after my son got home from work, but with one glitch--

The screen kept freezing, and needed to be constantly reset.

You can't have everything, I guess.

So Saturday was a strange mess, Sunday was time to relax... sort of.

I truly think that God is testing me through this entire business that I am going through, but honestly, I just wish that the test was over, and that I passed the audition, once and for all.

Rant #3,928: Crimson and Clover

Another week is coming to an end.

Another week of tests ...

And another week where I still don't know where I stand with my health.

I go from feeling OK to feeling lousy.

A lot of it is mental, but a lot of it is, I am sorry to say, physical. 

Next week appears to be a pretty "dry" week regarding further testing, as it appears that I have absolutely nothing on the docket--

Which is a good thing, because I am worn out from all of these tests, and I need a break.

But it is also a bad thing--

Because without the tests, I don't know where I stand with my health.

This all leads up to the following week, my birthday week, where right smack dab on the day of my birth, I have another major procedure to get done.

I am hoping that it is the best birthday present that I could ever give to myself.

We shall see.

Onto other things ...

Tomorrow is Record Store Day, where independent record stores feature a vast array of exclusive releases to those who attend.

For the second spring Record Store Day in a row, I am going to have to pass on being there, at least early in the morning when my local record store opens and the best merchandise is available.

I have too many things to do on Saturday, and honestly, I am not up to it right now.

Just to make sure that nothing on this RSD list is spiking my fancy, I looked at it again yesterday, and quite honestly, there is nothing on the list that I must have.

There are some interesting things, but nothing that will force me to get up at some ungodly hour and wait on a line to get into the store.

Now, that does not mean that I won't get to the store sometime during the weekend; it just means that I won't be there at the break of dawn to look through releases that I really don't want.

Saturday is a very busy day.

My son speaks to his doctor in a phone visit at 9 a.m.

My son then has his bowling league, and for the first time in a month, I have plans to be there and watch him and his team compete.

When that is over, there is a window for me to attend the event, and if I am up to it, I might just go and see what is available.

Later in the day into the evening, my family and I are attending a concert at Westbury Music Fair, a concert that was supposed to be held six months ago--when bad health was the furthest thing from my mind--and was postponed for one reason or another.

This will be a very good test of my mental and physical well being, and I am really looking forward to it.

The act we are seeing is Tommy James, who always puts on a great show, and I am hoping I can get through it unscathed.

It is also Wrestlemania weekend, so my son and I will be watching as much of that spectacle as possible, from the comfort of our living room couch.

So this Saturday, in particular, is going to be a real test for me.

Am I feeling better?

I guess I am, somewhat, but I still have some health problems, and that always is in the back of my mind.

I go up, down, all around on this question.

So this weekend is going to be a memorable one for me, one way or the other.

I really hope to get to RSD, and I hope that everyone gets to their local independent record store and supports that store as much as they can.

So with that all ahead of me, yes, I am looking forward to this weekend, and looking forward to it very positively.

I hope I can get through it.

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

Rant #3,927: Point of No Return

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is nothing but a dumpster fire of bad choices.

It has little to do with rock and roll anymore, and the names that are consistently left out for inclusion in this HoF reads like a who's who of rock and pop and popular music in general during the rock and roll era.

No Lesley Gore, no Neil Sedaka, no Monkees, no Paul Revere and the Raiders, no Tommy James and the Shondells, no Turtles ...

And I could go on and on and on.

Without these seminal acts, more current acts that get in routinely would not even have had the door left ajar for them to even exist.

This year's crap ... err ... crop of inductees is absolutely the worst class of them all, including Billy Idol, Phil Collins and such non-deservees as the Wu-Tang Clan and Sade.

Blecch!

Absolutely awful.

But for once, this dumpster fire finally did something right--

It named Ed Sullivan as an inductee via the Ahmet Ertegun Award for those who have had "a major influence on the creative development and growth of rock and roll music that has impacted culture."

If you were around during Sullivan's 23-year run on CBS every Sunday night--1948 to 1971--you know just how important he was--unwittingly--in the development and acceptance of rock and roll by our culture.

From Elvis Presley to the Beatles, he put on the national TV stage just about every major hitmaker of that era, pushing them into our living rooms, whether we--or he--liked it or not.

He knew how to grab the kids to his show, and in between Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny and Hollywood's "old guard," he sandwiched in the Rolling Stones and the Doors and even the Cowsills and Tiny Tim.

And those nights where he gave the world Elvis Presley and the Beatles--nights that no one will ever forget.

Sullivan preferred the newer acts that went by the old Hollywood aesthetic--the Supremes, Dave Clark 5, Petula Clark and the 5th Dimension among them--but he was just as open to the Jefferson Airplane and the Vanilla Fudge, anything to draw eyeballs to his show.

And millions watched, millions started to accept the rock and roll aesthetic, and this then new music was accepted into our society.

Sure, we had "American Bandstand," we had other shows of the same ilk, but to put rock and roll mixed in with the plate twirlers on prime time on Sunday night on the number one network solidified rock and roll's hold on the nation.

He championed black acts, he fought with the Rolling Stones and Jim Morrison of the Doors, he wore love beads with the Mamas and Papas, he preferred Ella Fitzgerald but put up with Janis Joplin--

Sullivan was the ultimate showman, and even though he probably didn't know it, his show made rock and roll the music of our times.

For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to name him to be inducted is way more important than inducting Luther Vandross and Iron Maiden, because quite frankly, without Sullivan opening the door for the likes of Jackie Wilson, James Brown and Steppenwolf, acts like this would never had had a pathway to the popularity that they enjoyed.

And that is why naming Ed Sullivan to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the best, and most significant, move that this place has made in probably about 40 years, since its early days.

Maybe there is hope for the place after all ...

But by naming the likes of Joy Division and Oasis this year, the induction of Ed Sullivan might have been nothing more than a major glitch.

Perhaps they meant it to be Topo Gigio ... ?

Rant #3,926: My House

Today is kind of a weird anniversary for myself and my family.

It is the one-year anniversary of us living in our current residence, and it is about two-and-a-half years or so since we moved from our house to the apartment complex we are in now.

I can focus on both anniversaries here right now, but using general observations.

When my family and I moved to our house on Long Island in late summer 1971, it meant a great change for the four of us, since we all were born, lived in and grew up in New York City.

When we moved out to Long Island in late July 1971, it was a real and true mind shift for us.

My parents finally had the home they wanted, in a safe environment, unlike where we came from, which was in such disarray that it prompted this move.

For my sister and I, it was a new beginning, one that was fraught with many potholes, in particular for me, because we moved just before I was starting high school, a time in one's life that is full of so many changes to begin with that any additional upheavals can be striking, and it certainly was for me.

Flash ahead more than 50 years, and I still lived in that house, this time with my wife and son, with my parents living in the same house.

When my parents passed away, my family and I were in for new changes and a new reality, that being that we had to leave our home, and leave it as quickly as possible.

My health problems started right then and there, but we found a nice, new neighborhood to live in, and we moved into our first apartment here a few weeks after my mother died, with me hobbling and really, there was nowhere else for us to go.

Then exactly a year ago today, we relocated within the same development to a much larger apartment, and while I wasn't hobbling anymore, I certainly did not know what the future would bring, and that hobbling led to more maladies that I can't comprehend.

Anyway, let me say right away that there is nothing like a house.

Moving from an apartment to a house is a daunting task, but it is doable.

Moving from a house into an apartment is more involved, more intense, and much more involved--

Especially when I, myself, lived in that house for the better part of 50 years.

We were darn lucky. 

We found a development not too far away from where we lived, but in another town and another county, which has posed its own problems.

I can still frequent places that I used to when we lived in the old neighborhood, and I still feel like I still live in that old neighborhood.

But it simply isn't the same as living in a house ...

I have grown to enjoy where we live, enjoy our apartment, enjoy our terrace, and enjoy being where we are now.

I still wish that things could have turned out differently, that we still could be in that house, but I guess it simply wasn't meant to be.

I have been near the old house, but I have never purposely driven by it.

It is not ours anymore, and I have no interest in seeing what it looks like now.

I am firmly ensconced where I am, so why look at something that isn't ours anymore?

It makes no sense, to me at least, so while I have had opportunities to do so--we are only about 3.5 miles away from where we were--what would be the point?

As Dorothy said in "The Wizard of Oz," "there's no place like home," and that is just so true.

And home is not in a house anymore, it is in an apartment, and that is my home now.

Thinking back to when I was a kid in Rochdale Village, when we would invite someone over to our apartment, we would say variations of "come to my house," or "let's go to my house," or something like that, even though the word "house" was used in place of "apartment."

I never remember uttering the word "apartment" in such instances, and all these years later, even though my "house" is my "apartment," things haven't changed that much.

My house, my apartment, is my home, and that is the way it is, and the way it will always be.

Rant #3,925: United We Stand

More tests.

More frustration.

More, more, more. 

How do I like it?

I don't, but it is for my betterment.

I know that, but I haven't had this many tests since graduate school, or maybe even grade school.

Whatever the amount of tests that I had back then, those were certainly happier times than now.

Right now, I feel that not only isn't my body right, I am in something of a brain fog--

But like I said the other day, I am determined to beat whatever it is that is ailing me, and beat it to a pulp--

No matter how long it takes.

And is that sentiment one that we share about what is happening in the Middle East?

And did anyone really think that the U.S. and Iran would come to any sort of agreement?

I am afraid that this conflict is one we can't win, but we can't lose either.

I think that we, as a nation, have to understand that the Arab Middle East is not the West in any way, shape or form.

We desire them to have Western values, but these are classic third world countries, governed by one thing, and one thing only:

Their religion, and their abject hate of all Western values.

This is a different enemy that we have fought in the past.

This is an enemy that doesn't care if it dies, because in death, they consider themselves to be martyrs, giving themselves up to Allah.

And their people, and those Arabs throughout the Middle East, are not people that will rise up in unison and stage uprisings to rid their government of its rulers and become more Western.

It is not happening with the Palestinians, it is not happening with the Iranians, and it is not happening with the Lebanese.

They voted in Hamas, they voted in Hezbollah, and they are OK to be governed by terrorists.

And if they are so comfortable with this leadership, we have to be mindful of that, that Western values aren't coming to the Arab world in these Middle Eastern countries anytime soon, if at all.

As much as we want it to happen, it simply isn't, and we have to understand that.

The fight that we--and Israel--are fighting is a good fight, a correct fight, but I am afraid it is going to lead nowhere, or at least not to the result we want it to come to.

Without help from Europe and our allies, and without any help from any of the Arab countries, we seem to be fighting a war not only with Iran and Lebanon, but amongst our own people and the world.

And with rising inflation, gas prices going over $4 a gallon, and everything going up exponentially each and every day of this war, it is a conflict that I am afraid, even though it is just, is simply going to lead to an uprising among our country's citizens.

I have said it before, and I am going to say it again:

To play on an old phrase we all learned in high school, "The pocketbook is mightier than the sword."

And when average Americans like you and I are spending more dollars than we can afford to simply get through each and every day, we are losing the battle amongst ourselves.

How much longer can we take it?

And when Tiger Woods can call the president when he gets picked up for DUI, who does the average American call when prices are rising to an outrageous level?

There will come a point when we, as a nation, are going to have to take a step back from all of this, and really see what is in our best interests.

We have weakened this enemy, but we have not destroyed them; and their people are simply too weak to take over where we started.

I am sure if we had our druthers, at this point in time, we would love to push that button and totally annihilate them, but that isn't happening any time soon or at all.

So we have to prepare for our endgame, and Israel--which would love to push that button, too--must prepare for its endgame, too.

That does not mean giving up, it means understanding the situation, while continuing to monitor it and take action when necessary, and plan to move on.

The threat will still be there, but it will be weakened ...

Mightily weakened.

The American public has just so much patience, and that patience is getting thinner by the day.

And our allies should absolutely be ashamed of themselves at their behavior during this time when we all should be pulling together.

In their future times of need, we should act in kind.

We are in a world where things are topsy turvy, where good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys.

We--the U.S.--are the good guys here, but you wouldn't know it by our allies' reactions to what we are doing to rid the world of these terroristic regimes.

So be it.

We have a great friend in the Middle East in Israel, all the other supposed friends we have there really aren't that at all, and like the old song said,

"United We Stand, Divided We Fall."

Now, onto more tests ... 

And I think that we, as a country, are in for more tests, too.

Rant #3,924: Hope and Deliverance

Another week, another set of medical tests--

Which will lead to still more tests--

And still more tests after that.

And the cost--

Don't get me started on that.

It is kind of never ending, but I know that it will all lead up to me being healthy, so I just have to put up with it.

I mean, it is Monday the 13th, not Friday the 13th, so it is all good.

This past weekend, I was still suffering some after-effects from the PT scan I had, so I had to bow out of taking my son to his bowling league on Saturday morning.

My wife has just been so good about everything--my Rock of Gibraltar--so she took him.

The PT scan left me tired, and still slightly irradiated, so I just felt it was better that I took at least the morning off, giving me one more day to get back firmly in the saddle.

Physically, I wasn't up to par, and probably mentally, too, since I will hear about the findings of the test this morning--

While I receive another test, and prepare for a future test where my doctor has to sign some papers to give me the go-ahead to have this test done.

But enough about that--

How about that Artemis splashdown!

The re-entry into our atmosphere and the splashdown were probably the most difficult tasks of that entire project to accomplish, and they did it!

I was probably asleep when it happened, but I was so happy that they made it.

This project will be a stepping stone to our eventual landing on the moon once again, after a more than 50-year wait.

I was mesmerized by the moon landings as a kid, and I will continue to be mesmerized when it finally happens again, supposedly in two years.

I hope that I am well enough to enjoy something like this, so now is the time to get better.

Closer to now, I have my daughter's wedding coming up in October, which to me, is as spectacular as the Artemis project in some ways.

I am really looking forward to this occasion, and I just hope that I am well enough to fully enjoy it.

My health, the Artemis project and my daughter's wedding are linked by one thing:

The unknown.

Right now, I don't know about my health and where I stand with it;

Any project the size and scope of Artemis--where we will be going back to the moon and then Mars--always creates an unknown that we have to encounter and surmount;

And my daughter's wedding also has something of an unknown factor in it, as any wedding does.

Look, I am not linking the gravity and weight of my health or my daughter's wedding with this outer space project--

Artemis is something completely different, something that people will talk about for generations after, while my health and my daughter's wedding are just personal family footnotes--

But that unknown factor is there for the three of them--

And they are actually linked together by something else--

Hope.

Hope that they all succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

And I wish that for the brave astronauts who man the Artemis capsules, my daughter and her future husband, and for myself.

Hope leads to good things, and hope always triumphs over the unknown.

And even though I might be damaged goods, I will always have a lot of hope, that things will turn out the right way.

How can I think anything else?

Rant #3,923: The Boxer

My personal health situation remains up in the air.

I have so many medical appointments coming up that it is truly head spinning.

I am absolutely not well right now, but I guess I could be worse.

When you are healthy, relatively, your entire life, and then you get hit by everything including the kitchen sink, it kind of makes you crazy.

Today, I have to go for a PT scan, or what they call a pet scan, and that should tell me something about my lungs.

Something turned up on a catscan where I have a spot on my left lung.

It doesn't necessarily mean cancer, and a lot of people have this, I have been told, and it often comes up as not much of anything.

But I know that some people who have not smoked have gotten lung cancer--

Barry Manilow is one of these people ... comic Andy Kauffman also, and he died of lung cancer having never smoked.

So it is just another mountain I have to scale, and I am obviously hoping it is nothing.

If it is something, let's get it taken care of, so I can move on to the next mountain.

Yes, all of this is quite depressing, and right now, I don't know which way is up, to be quite frank about it.

And as I have said a million times, and probably will say a million times more, this is not what I envisioned retirement to be.

I know that I am not fully retired to begin with, but I have had a very difficult retirement, and it just seems to be getting worse and worse and worse.

My family tries to keep me strong, and it is very difficult on them.

I have a good resolve to move on and surmount these challenges, but I keep on getting hit where it hurts, and it is tough to wake up with a smile each day.

And dealing with all the doctors and their staffs is another story altogether.

(As an example, on Wednesday, I made an appointment for another catscan, and the person I made it with got the date wrong--by a full month! 

Happily, I was able to see the mistake and change the date, but I mean, c'mon now, do I speak another language than the English you supposedly know?

Complete incompetency.)

It really puts you on edge ... everything is on my head right now, and I don't really think it should be that way.

Then there are the little things, things that somehow become big when nothing else is working out right.

On Tuesday, among other things, I had to deal with my computer's printer, which was not printing anything that I put through it.

It took about an hour for it to work correctly; I tried everything to get it going--

But out of desperation, I replaced the two ink cartridges I was using, and I got it going again.

Sounds simple, but when everything else is cratering, this just adds another brick to the load.

I find that I cannot relax, that I am always in motion ...

But my energy level is not what it normally is, which makes it that much harder.

I really pushed myself on Tuesday.

Way before the printer problem, I had to go to the pharmacy; I went to the supermarket and bought another box of matzohs, since what I had ran out; I decided to go to the record store for a little while, since it was a stone's throw away from my final destination, which was the dentist, as I had an appointment for a cleaning.

I did it all, but my stamina simply isn't there, and it was all I could do to not fall asleep when the technician was cleaning my teeth.

I got home, did some work, and tried to relax ...

But then I had the printer problem, so that was a no go.

On Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, I know that I started to talk in my sleep again, so I moved myself to the living room, where I relaxed, somewhat, and from 3 a.m. to probably about 4:30 a.m., that is where I was, so I would not wake up my wife with my chatter.

I went back into the bedroom and fell asleep, but my wife told me that I did wake her up.

The bottom line is that my quality of life right now is not that great, but I am determined to beat whatever ails me, whether it is one thing or multiple things.

Wednesday was a better day than Tuesday was, as was Thursday.

I had much more energy and I was able to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do earlier in the week.

It has given me strength, and has enabled me to feel better about myself and my situation.

I promise you that I will beat this, beat it to a pulp, and move on with my life.

It might take awhile--I am not a patient person--but I am going to beat all of this as best that I can.

I expect to look at this Rant a few years down the line and say to myself, "Remember when?"--

And shake my head that I had to go through all of this stuff, but that I was able to get through it.

I am a fighter, and I am not down for the count just yet.

Not by a long shot.

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