Rant #3,884: Taking Care of Business

We finally did our taxes, and as predicted--

My son did well--

My wife and I did not.

And just so you know, if you are over 65 years of age, you do get a tax credit, but it does not remove the tax entirely.

This credit did help us out to an extent, but we still owed plenty of money to the state and federal government.

Again, most of it can be attributed to the fact that I am considered to be an "independent contractor" with my job, and I have to pay taxes on that money that I make from being a remote worker, and I have to pay it at tax time.

Simple as that.

And if you need to take money out of other areas to pay off things, it is considered to be income, and you have to pay taxes on that too.

So what it all amounted to was that we had to pay the piper once again.

I am just glad that it is all over and done with for another year.

But this year, I found that a lot of the institutions we deal with took their time sending us our tax forms.

Now, I thought it was a law that all of these forms had to be in by January 31, and honestly, I haven't had that much of a problem with getting these forms--save one or two, including from my workplace--before this year.

This year, many of these tax forms that we needed were sent after January 31, and we even got one or two on the day we filed our taxes, a couple of days into February.

This is just plain wrong, but I guess if there was a law about this, it is not in force anymore, and if there wasn't a law, companies just sent these things out by January 31, but many simply don't anymore, for whatever reason.

But it is all done for calendar year 2025, and that is the important thing.

Tax, tax, tax ...

And you know who gets it in the end.

The poor don't/can't pay taxes because they have no money, and the rich don't/can't pay taxes because they have plenty of ways to avoid doing so--

Leaving the middle class to foot the tax bill.

It has always been like this, it isn't changing any time soon, so you just have to learn to live with it and just manage to do the best you can do under the circumstances.

Tax day is not my favorite day of the year, but after all is said and done, I am just glad that it is over and done with.

First, getting the staples out of my head, and now, paying our tax bill ...

Two things weighing on me that I don't have to worry about anymore.

What's next?

It is just too taxing on my brain to think about that right now.

Rant #3,883: Superman

Hip hip hooray!

We are finally past all of the phony Super Bowl hype--and the Bad Bunny nonsense--and we can move on from all of it.

I have absolutely no interest in the Super Bowl, and for once, there were actually things for me to do so I didn't have to get the least bit involved in this utter stupidity.

My son worked on Sunday in frigid temperatures, so he was my main priority--

Getting him to work and bringing him back home.

In the morning, my wife and I did our secondary shopping as we normally do, and we picked up a few things that we didn't get in our main shopping on the previous Friday.

I then ate lunch, and after that, I watched NBA basketball, where the Knicks played the Celtics, and the Knicks won in a runaway.

After that--and after I took my son to work--I digitized one of the LPs, the soundtrack to the 1969 film "Alice's Restaurant," the comical Vietnam War protest film that I took quite a liking to way back when.

The film was good, the music was even better, and how could you not sing along to the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," Parts I and II?

Then came dinner, and after that--and after my daily exercise regimen, which I am back to doing after my staples incident--I sat down to watch the TV news, and then, I watched a binge of "Here's Lucy" on the "Catchy Comedy" channel.

The show is true old fashioned comedy, and the channel was showing a lot of the episodes where famous stars of the day appeared, including Helen Hayes, Joe Namath, Petula Clark and Donny Osmond.

The shows are corny, they don't really hold up at all, but they are pretty funny, so it made for a smooth transition into 1) picking up my son from work, and 2) bedtime.

And boy did I sleep!

I had one of my rare nine-hour sleeps, from 10 p.m. to about 7:30 a.m., a sleep that I only have when I am really tired.

And I guess staying away from any mention of the Super Bowl made me tired, but honestly, this was the first Super Bowl Sunday in recent memory that there were actually great alternatives for me to spend a nice weekend day, and not be pounded with the game, which has become so political that it really isn't a sporting event anymore.

And don't get me started about the Olympics, which have had little or nothing to do with athletic achievement since that fateful day in 1972 when Israeli Olympians were murdered simply because they were Jewish.

I haven't watched a minute of any Olympics since then, because even at 15 years old in 1972, I pretty much knew where the games would be headed now and into the future.

And I was correct in my assumptions.

All politics all the time, all hype, phony nationalism, etc.

Just to sum it up, I had a great, and very relaxing, Super Bowl Sunday without even a hint of the Super Bowl in my activity during the day.

(On Monday, I did have to edit a story for work about Super Bowl festivities at one of our bases in Germany, so I wasn't completely immune to this fever, but--)

Who won the Big Game?

Who cares? 

Rant #3,882: The Truth Will Set You Free

I am staple-less!

The staples came out on Friday afternoon, and to echo James Brown--

I feel good!

It hurt a little bit when they took the staples out of my scalp.

There was one staple that when the doctor took it out, for a millisecond, I felt a bit dizzy, but I got my composure back quickly, and before I knew it, it was done.

No staples, no cancer, it is over.

Now I can relax a little bit, but next month, I go to my retinologist to see how my detached retina is doing.

I have some other lingering ailments, but at least for right now, I am OK.

Let's move on ...

To something that I don't really want to talk about, but I will anyway.

President Trump.

I think he has done some good things as our President.

I did not vote for him, but some of the things he has done are impressive, including at least laying the groundwork for peace in the Middle East.

But alas, there are some things that I think he has done that have me scratching my head, with staples in it or not.

The latest is the uproar and furor surrounding his recent post, on his own platform, where he depicted former President Obama and his wife as monkeys or apes or baboons or whatever it was.

The President denies putting this video up, stating that one of his aides erroneously posted it without his knowledge--

But you know what? That explanation really doesn't register.

And the fact that he won't apologize--because he said he didn't do it--really doesn't suffice either.

The whole thing goes back to the tired--and I mean VERY tired--premise that he can't simply drop, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

It wasn't, so let's move on.

But he can't, he won't, and he refuses to do so.

He portrayed various politicians he doesn't like related to this canard by placing their heads on jungle figures--

I mean, he is the KING of the jungle, isn't he?

And Obama and his wife were portrayed as being monkeys, or baboons, or whatever it was.

This is just plain wrong.

No matter how much you despise someone, you don't do this, and being that the two are black, it just makes it more horrendous--

And to do this during Black History Month, however you feel about that, it is wrong during this month, or the other 11 months of the year.

Both Republicans and Democrats pretty much came out in unison against what he did, and for once, they were both correct--

And the President is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I don't care if his little grandchild did it, it was under grandpa's name, under his watch, and he owns it, whether he actually did it himself or not.

His press secretary, who was put in a really awkward position answering questions about this post, told reporters something to the affect that we should all "move on to something more important," but I mean, what was she going to say to try and cover for her boss?

Trump was wrong, 1,000-percent wrong, and whether he actually did it or not, he should apologize to the Obamas and to the public for this outrage.

And what's worse is the reverberations this will have in the future for the Republican Party.

Looking to the future, some of his unpopular actions are going to make it very difficult for the party to maintain its stance in the near future elections, and his behavior will make it almost impossible for the Republicans to win the next Presidential election.

His approval ratings are way down, and the Democrats have made great strides in winning a number of key elections across the country during the past year or so.

Do you think that utter nonsense like this is going to allow his party to make gains in the near future?

And it will completely doom whoever the Republicans choose to be their presidential candidate after Trump.

And based on the past, you just know what the President will do when his party's choice loses--

He will distance himself from that person, say that he won twice, and say that he actually won three times, and this guy or gal is simply a loser.

Again, I do not think that President Trump has been a bad commander in chief, but many of his actions are so based on ego, and ego alone, that it is turning off so many people--

Voters that the Republicans need to maintain their margins in Congress and in the White House.

This latest imbecility pretty much puts the focus on just how brittle his relationship with the public really is, and if I were advising him, I would tell him--implore to him--that he has got to tone it down a bit--

If not for him, then for Republicans in general.

It doesn't take staples in my head to see that he is making some great mistakes, and this latest thing might be the worst of the worst.

Take ownership of it, apologize, call onto the carpet the aide who supposedly did this--is there really one?--and move on.

You can't sleep?

Get off Truth Social, and get a hobby.

Rant #3,881: Up, Up and Away

Today, I am happy to say that I finally get the staples taken out of my scalp.

Hopefully, everything is good up there and I will be fully on the road to recovery.

It has been difficult since the cancer was removed, but somehow, I have gotten through it.

Onto other matters ...

We lost two more personalities from our Baby Boomer youths this week.

One was Mickey Lolich, one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball during the late 1960s and early 1970s, who carried the Detroit Tigers on his shoulders when they went on to win the 1968 World Series.

He won three games in that series, and that is in addition to winning more than 200 games during his career.

Lolich, 85, was second fiddle to Denny McLain, the last 30-game winner in a season, but when it came down to it, Lolich was the better pitcher and had a much longer career.

He is another guy who should be in the Hall of Fame, but isn't.

And then we have a name that you might not know well, but you certainly knew his image well at one time.

LaMonte McLemore, a founding member of The 5th Dimension, died Tuesday morning. He was 90 years of age, and he died from natural causes following a stroke suffered several years ago.

McLemore was the "tall" guy in the group, and while he usually was in the background when the group performed, he was in the foreground in the background, if you know what I mean.

He was the arranger of the group's music, so he was perhaps the most important cog in the 5th Dimension's success. In that capacity, he mapped out the music for different instruments and different voices, and based on his group's success, he was a master of his craft.

Doing a little research on this guy, I found out that he was an athlete--he had played minor league baseball--and an avid photographer, chronicling the group's hit cycle in photographs in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The 5th Dimension, along with Three Dog Night — which lost Chuck Negron the other day--were perhaps our most popular singing groups during this period, and while Negron was out front with his group, McLemore was in the background in his act, but he was pivotal in the success of songs like "Go Where You Wanna Go," "One Less Bell To Answer," "Up, Up and Away," and "Aquarius," among all the massive hits the 5th Dimension had.

So, two more from that era are gone, and with the passing of Demond Wilson, this has not been too good a week for people who excelled during another time and place.

Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday--

Without the staples in my head ...

Although there is supposed to be more snow coming to contend with.

Would I rather have snow or staples?

For once, I will take the snow.

Rant #3,880: Taxman

Yes, it is tax time!

How exciting!

My family and I always get hit pretty hard by the taxman.

My son usually makes out OK, but my wife and I ...

Fugedaboudit!

The problem is that since I am a remote worker, I am, pretty much, an independent contractor, and the taxman hits me pretty hard when it comes time to pay up.

My father, as a licensed New York City medallion cab driver, used to go through the same thing each and every year during his more than 50 years of cab driving, so I know all too well that it is now time to pay the piper.

And then we have Social Security, which greatly impacts your taxes, where you get double taxed, when you get your monthly money and then, when you have to pay Uncle Sam.

President Trump, when he was running for President this time around, told us all that one of his major thrusts would be at cleaning up Social Security, where monies were going out to those who didn't deserve it, like people who were getting monthly checks for those who had been dead for years, and in some cases, for decades.

That was clearly fraud, and he stated that he would weed those poachers out.

But he also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security, and I have to tell you, I am not sure if he did this in his "Big Beautiful Bill" or not.

We still pay monthly taxes on our Social Security payments, but are we supposed to be getting that money back when we do our taxes?

I thought that for the next two years--2025 and 2026--we are supposed to get that money taken off our taxes, but I have heard differing reports on this--

So I am confused, to say the least.

I guess we will find out when we go to our accountant, and yes, it greatly impacts myself, my wife and my son.

The next thing is that as of this moment, I do not have my tax material from work.

I don't know if this is because I am a remote worker or just from negligence, but it seems every year that I have to ask for the form, and this year is no different.

I have contacted the person at work who handles this several times, and I have yet to get anything.

And I have learned that it isn't just me who is waiting for this form; at least one other co-worker is in the same boat that I am.

I get my daily message from the post office about what is in my mail, and lo and behold, on Wednesday, it once again was not in the mail, so I contacted the office on Wednesday morning to tell them that it is not in the mail, and I was told that, supposedly, it is going to be taken care of.

That is fine, but it simply adds insult to injury that I have to go through this seemingly each and every year--

And this is going on six years as of this writing.

Not fair, not fair at all.

So as of this moment, I have not made our yearly tax appointment with our accountant, because while we have everything else we need, this crucial piece is still missing.

I just want to get this process over and done with, I don't want it to linger, and since it is officially tax season, let's get this thing done already.

The guillotine is sharp, it is waiting, and the time has come to get my yearly head chopping.

I may still have those staples in my head, but let's get this done already while I still have a head to chop.

Rant #3,879: Joy To the World

We lost Demond Wilson the other day, and now, we have lost another popular performer from a different time and place.

Chuck Negron died the other day at age 83, and if you don't know the name, you do know the following three words:

Three Dog Night.

Negron was one of the three lead singers of this ultra-popular band, and he was probably the most lead singer of that three-headed monster, along with Cory Wells and Danny Hutton.

With a superb backing band, the three had numerous hits from the late 1960s into the mid 1970s, and you know all of them, whether you knew Negron's name or not.

"Joy to the World," "Eli's Coming," "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)," "Black and White," and my favorite, "The Show Must Go On," where Negron's vocals, I felt, were among the top lead vocals of any song of that era.

And he was a trailblazer.

He was of Puerto Rican descent, and decades before Bad Bunny even was born, Negron was perhaps the first lead singer of Puerto Rican descent to nab top hits and albums.

Three Dog Night was not without controversy.

First off, a lot of people derided them because they sang other peoples' songs, like those from Laura Nyro, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Leo Sayer, among others--

Not realizing that the three lead singers had all been around the block, so to speak, had paid their dues, and had been business veterans even before the forming of the band.

Having three lead singers led to a lot of ego issues, and with Negron the actual lead singer on most of the hits, there was a lot of animosity between him and Wells and Hutton, which eventually led to a breakup in the late 1970s.

There was also a lot of hard drug use in the band, and Negron was a major part of that environment, by his own admission.

It got so bad for him that the other two singers broke away from him, and he was so down in the dumps at one time--spending his fortune on hard drugs--that he actually lived on Skid Row in Los Angeles for a time.

He was sick, and had a very bad case of COPD, but somehow, he rehabilitated himself, and during his last few years, he recorded a number of solo albums and was part of the "Happy Together" Tour.

His voice was unmistakable, and while his ills greatly impacted his health, the voice may have been a little more ragged, but it was still there.

I saw him during one of the "Happy Together" Tour stops on Long Island, and he sounded good--and really happy.

Wells and Hutton toured separately under the Three Dog Night banner into the 1990s, and Wells' passing left Hutton as the sole lead singer of the act.

Reports are that a few months ago, Hutton and Negron finally buried the hatchet, and there have always been persistent rumors that the two--and when Wells was alive, the three--would get back together someday, which actually happened in the late 1980s when they recorded an EP together that garnered some FM rock station airplay,

But it was nothing permanent, and with Negron's passing and Wells' own demise, Hutton remains the last Three Dog Night singer standing.

So, with Negron's passing, one of the great voices of that era is gone, but the records remain as his legacy.

Listening to Three Dog Night all these years later, a lot of those hits hold up pretty well, and Negron's voice continues to stand out from the rest.

R.I.P. Chuck Negron.

You brought a lot of "Joy to the World" with your voice, and your overall talent.

Rant #3,878: Human Nature

OK, let's get this out of the way right at the get go: 

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, so we are getting six more weeks of winter.

I have no idea what the other groundhogs saw on Groundhog Day yesterday, but if you want to believe Phil, we are in for it during this winter.

Six more weeks of winter ...

Well, that only brings us into mid-March, so I think his calculations are a bit off.

Not only do we have to get through February in its entirety, but I think we have to get through the entire month of March, too, and maybe the first week or two of April before we can kiss Winter 2026 goodbye.

So, in actuality, Phil's prediction is kind of short, isn't it, and short by a couple of weeks.

Sure, the Groundhog Day's predictions are always fun, but they are far from practical, and you really have to take them with a grain of salt--

Road salt, that is, or maybe even Kosher salt.

They both will do the trick.

I just heard that in my neck of the woods, we might have some more snow on Wednesday, and of course, the temperatures have been way down too, so this winter has been a memorable one for the wrong reasons.

Some say to move south, and you won't have to experience a real winter, but we all know how false that is based on this winter, where they are even getting snow in the northern part of Florida, and frigid temperatures have even hit Miami Beach on occasion.

I guess the only way to protect yourself from a real winter is to move to Hawaii, but that isn't happening.

So Phil, thanks but no thanks for your prediction.

It doesn't hold water--or snow--during this year's winter.

And you believe a groundhog as opposed to a meterologist?

I will go with the professional weather forecasters, even though much of the time, they get their own predictions wrong--

But this year, they have pretty much been spot on.

We have Lonnie Quinn here locally on the flagship CBS station in New York, and when he rolls up his sleeves, you know that the weather is going to be disastrous, no matter what season we are in.

It is a trademark of his, and he had those sleeves rolled up when we were blasted with 12 inches of snow and frigid temperatures a few days ago.

Hopefully, he won't have to roll up his sleeves any time in the near future, but with the weather as it has been, I wouldn't bet against it happening.

The groundhogs can only see their shadow; Quinn rolls up his sleeves.

I will go with the sleeves over the shadow anytime.

And just so you know, with the staples in my head the past two weeks, I have covered up my head with my baseball hat--

And yes, pitchers and catchers will be reporting to spring training camps this week and into next week ...

And you just know that even with a hint of baseball on the horizon, that the warm weather is coming.

And you also just know that when the warm weather does finally get here, we will be moaning about how hot it is just as we have been moaning about how cold it is right now.

It is all just human nature, and hot and cold, that is the way we are.

So try to sit tight; keep on telling yourself--

"The warmer weather is coming, the warmer weather is coming ... ."

And it is--

At the crack of a bat.