I know a guy who’s always having conversations with me to which I’m not privy. He comes in here ready for an argument. He’s already decided what I’m going to say, and he wants me to know that he’s all ready for me, pre-pissed. I think he actually hears voices. Thank God for cell phones. Now he can talk all he wants and seem normal.
This guy is a genius. He works alone. The guy sits in his underwear all day, every day, at his computer. He does all right, moneywise. But he thinks he actually works with people. He thinks he has them all figured out. It’s no wonder he’s crazy. That’s the thing with these guys - they’re socializing without pants.
I invited him out with some girls who work for my cousin, who would rather drive 40 miles for a pizza than eat the pizza my cousin makes, which has a thick crust and government cheese, which my cousin uses because the people like it. And let me tell you, with fresh tomatoes and hot pepper, it’s a winning formula.
My cousin loves pizza, which he doesn’t trust himself to make properly. And he would be foolish to try, since anything that might interrupt the flow of people lining up for what he does make would be foolish indeed. So we go out for pizza a lot.
We drive halfway to Atlantic City and this computer guy is chatting-up the girls like Frank Sinatra. I’m so glad for him. Real girls, very cute, heading out in my cousin’s van, which seats 11 pretty comfortably, 12 if you’re cozy, which we were. And don’t worry - my wife was there.
This guy is talking constantly about computers, smart phones, Pods, Pads, reading devices, the whole 21st century picture, as it were. And he tries to do it with a certain flair, like it’s all witty and fascinating. Once he started to predict the future, the girls’ eyes started to glaze over - and we’re still on the Blackhorse Pike. I thought to myself: this poor bastard is never going to get laid.
When Dancing With The Stars was raised as a subject, he dismissed it out of hand as an unworthy topic. By the time the pizza arrived, the only person left to talk to him was my cousin, who doesn’t have a computer but who is always very nice, especially with the elderly and the disabled. Which is not to say that this guy can’t be rehabilitated into society. He just has to get out more.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Rage
When my sister died, she fought for her life. And I mean fought. I saw in my sister an anger that had never existed. All you wanted to get was out of her way. And who could blame her? She had a good life, the life she wanted - the life she not only dreamed about but was enjoying in full. No wonder she was livid.
They diagnosed her by surprise, on the day she picked out her wedding invitations. She went to the stationer’s in the morning, but called him back to cancel the order after she went to the doctor. Her fiancé had to pay extra, a few weeks later, having spent the interim begging her to marry him all over again, which she did, in the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to, up in Merion, just as the leaves were turning. A year later she was dead. This was the longest year of my life up until that time. For my sister, it was the shortest.
I was generally spared her anger - and we were like twins, which is what everybody thought, since we were joined at the hip. My mother, she got plenty. I got the best, along with my brother-in-law, who she never stopped loving for one minute. In fact, she died in his arms on my father’s birthday. I happened not to be there for the cake, as usual, which they were eating in the living room, my sister having been sent home, her last round of chemo a complete failure. She was in her robe, as beautiful as a woman could be, when she put her cake down on the coffee table. I don’t think I’ll be finishing this, she said.
She didn’t have to say it to me. I was never sorry not to be there, to sing Happy Birthday to my father, who wasn’t happy at all. I knew she wouldn’t be finishing something or other, and I had no intention of ever saying goodbye, because she didn’t either, which is how we left it.
You’re living right up until the moment you’re not, which means the same thing if you’re dying a slow and painful death or if you’re hit by a bus. The slow and painful part can get you pissed off. We know we’re dying and we’re not happy about it, despite the morphine. Or even despite the fact that we’re 90 years old. We should we be living, since living is all we know.
I heard somebody say that it’s important to suffer; otherwise you don’t know you want to die. I’m not sure that’s true, unless you’re talking suicide, which, as it involves suffering, usually comes in the form of not living very well. Basically, you never want to die. The only thing you can say about suffering is that it is proof of life, and being angry about it demonstrates the fact.
They diagnosed her by surprise, on the day she picked out her wedding invitations. She went to the stationer’s in the morning, but called him back to cancel the order after she went to the doctor. Her fiancé had to pay extra, a few weeks later, having spent the interim begging her to marry him all over again, which she did, in the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to, up in Merion, just as the leaves were turning. A year later she was dead. This was the longest year of my life up until that time. For my sister, it was the shortest.
I was generally spared her anger - and we were like twins, which is what everybody thought, since we were joined at the hip. My mother, she got plenty. I got the best, along with my brother-in-law, who she never stopped loving for one minute. In fact, she died in his arms on my father’s birthday. I happened not to be there for the cake, as usual, which they were eating in the living room, my sister having been sent home, her last round of chemo a complete failure. She was in her robe, as beautiful as a woman could be, when she put her cake down on the coffee table. I don’t think I’ll be finishing this, she said.
She didn’t have to say it to me. I was never sorry not to be there, to sing Happy Birthday to my father, who wasn’t happy at all. I knew she wouldn’t be finishing something or other, and I had no intention of ever saying goodbye, because she didn’t either, which is how we left it.
You’re living right up until the moment you’re not, which means the same thing if you’re dying a slow and painful death or if you’re hit by a bus. The slow and painful part can get you pissed off. We know we’re dying and we’re not happy about it, despite the morphine. Or even despite the fact that we’re 90 years old. We should we be living, since living is all we know.
I heard somebody say that it’s important to suffer; otherwise you don’t know you want to die. I’m not sure that’s true, unless you’re talking suicide, which, as it involves suffering, usually comes in the form of not living very well. Basically, you never want to die. The only thing you can say about suffering is that it is proof of life, and being angry about it demonstrates the fact.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Jimmy Leg
There’s always room at the top - but only if you’re an alien. Natives need not apply. As an alien it’s strictly: take me to your leader. Me, I’m always an alien. Except over here, of course. I’m frying onions over here, and it stinks - if you don’t mind my saying. But onions I must fry, and there’s nothing alien in that. It brings in the money.
My friend Jimmy lives in a sea of money - potassium sorbate to be exact, which they need a lot of in China. I only know him because I’m a guy who speaks Italian on more or less the same level as Jimmy, which isn’t very high. I saw him last week in Hong Kong. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a $4000 pair of shoes, but Jimmy was wearing them. You could see that they were English, because they looked like boats.
Jimmy likes boats. He’s got an 80 million dollar yacht, or it was before he hung the art and installed a grand piano in the salon. The tender alone is 15 meters, which is about the size of the crew, considering what you get in the way of sailors out by China, where they come pretty cheap. I’m sure they sleep like rats below decks, but fat rats at that. Up in the wheelhouse he has Vikings, complete with beards.
We became friends the first time we met, which was an entirely serendipitous moment in the port of Capri, where I often happen to be. We shook hands at the café and he asked me aboard. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find myself on a boat like that often enough. So it was hard to hide my enthusiasm.
Some guests on a boat like this tend to act like they have a similar one of their own, but for some strange reason they're on this one. Others act like they’re just waiting until their ship comes in, so they’re stopping over while they kill some time. A few seem to enjoy themselves a little too much. As for me, I’m the guy nobody knows, but one thing is for sure. I don’t have a boat like this and there’s no way I’m ever going to get one. I’m just happy to be on deck.
So my new friend and me go crawling all over his yacht - up and down, fore and aft, bridge, heads, and galleys. How can you not admire a perfectly beveled custom mirror with a ¼ in. reveal, set in chrome? I went nuts. And Jimmy, he loved it. Nobody ever went nuts. They just acted as if they had a mirror like that too.
Now we’re pals, so I stopped over to see him in Hong Kong on my way back from Hangzhou, where I was introducing a friend from Parma to some very interesting pig farmers, and I met him at The Jockey Club.
Jimmy has a box at The Jockey Club, which is a lot like his boat, which is to say it’s bigger than my house. But it’s got to be much more expensive, since unlike the boat, The Jockey Club isn’t going anywhere. There’s only so much racetrack to go around in Happy Valley.
I saw that the track was perfect for him, since he never stops running. In fact, whenever he’s there, he’s never in his box, unless he has money on a horse, which is rare. Jimmy doesn’t like to gamble. Money, he doesn’t waste. Money, he spends. But don’t think he isn’t tight with a buck. He’s like a dog chasing a rabbit. Once he gets it, he won’t let go, unless you offer him another rabbit.
He’s a club Steward, which in his case means handing out trophies and shaking the jockey’s hand in the winner’s circle, which he considers a chore. But it does give him a chance to actually run on the track, which he did the night I was there. He was standing next to me one minute, sipping dolcetto high over the field of dreams, and the next minute I see him down on the track, running. Up on the jumbotron comes his face, 50 feet tall. They hand him a trophy and he hands it off to a jockey, who’s bigger than Jimmy. The whole thing took a minute, and then came the flashbulbs. Suddenly, he’s standing next to me again, like he just went to the bathroom.
He’s been over here a half dozen times and I’m not ashamed of it. I never know when he’ll show up. He runs in like this is a crime scene and he’s EMS, but with a limo. He sees me behind the grill and watches me work. He makes me proud of it because it seems to calm him down. And he knows one thing for sure. He won’t be paying for a sandwich. So I turn out to be a good deal. As for me, I love to watch him work - chasing money all over the place and figuring out how to spend it. But once you get a look at him, it’s clear that Jimmy is an all time champion. Cheer is all you can do.
What’s he got that you haven’t got? The shoes, for one thing. But in his case, he needs them. And what do I have that interests him so much, beside chicken cutlets? Beats me. All I’ve got is appreciation, which is maybe what all that money is about. I don’t hold it against him. I feel the opposite, since I was taught as a child that to be rich is glorious, which is what they teach over there.
My friend Jimmy lives in a sea of money - potassium sorbate to be exact, which they need a lot of in China. I only know him because I’m a guy who speaks Italian on more or less the same level as Jimmy, which isn’t very high. I saw him last week in Hong Kong. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a $4000 pair of shoes, but Jimmy was wearing them. You could see that they were English, because they looked like boats.
Jimmy likes boats. He’s got an 80 million dollar yacht, or it was before he hung the art and installed a grand piano in the salon. The tender alone is 15 meters, which is about the size of the crew, considering what you get in the way of sailors out by China, where they come pretty cheap. I’m sure they sleep like rats below decks, but fat rats at that. Up in the wheelhouse he has Vikings, complete with beards.
We became friends the first time we met, which was an entirely serendipitous moment in the port of Capri, where I often happen to be. We shook hands at the café and he asked me aboard. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find myself on a boat like that often enough. So it was hard to hide my enthusiasm.
Some guests on a boat like this tend to act like they have a similar one of their own, but for some strange reason they're on this one. Others act like they’re just waiting until their ship comes in, so they’re stopping over while they kill some time. A few seem to enjoy themselves a little too much. As for me, I’m the guy nobody knows, but one thing is for sure. I don’t have a boat like this and there’s no way I’m ever going to get one. I’m just happy to be on deck.
So my new friend and me go crawling all over his yacht - up and down, fore and aft, bridge, heads, and galleys. How can you not admire a perfectly beveled custom mirror with a ¼ in. reveal, set in chrome? I went nuts. And Jimmy, he loved it. Nobody ever went nuts. They just acted as if they had a mirror like that too.
Now we’re pals, so I stopped over to see him in Hong Kong on my way back from Hangzhou, where I was introducing a friend from Parma to some very interesting pig farmers, and I met him at The Jockey Club.
Jimmy has a box at The Jockey Club, which is a lot like his boat, which is to say it’s bigger than my house. But it’s got to be much more expensive, since unlike the boat, The Jockey Club isn’t going anywhere. There’s only so much racetrack to go around in Happy Valley.
I saw that the track was perfect for him, since he never stops running. In fact, whenever he’s there, he’s never in his box, unless he has money on a horse, which is rare. Jimmy doesn’t like to gamble. Money, he doesn’t waste. Money, he spends. But don’t think he isn’t tight with a buck. He’s like a dog chasing a rabbit. Once he gets it, he won’t let go, unless you offer him another rabbit.
He’s a club Steward, which in his case means handing out trophies and shaking the jockey’s hand in the winner’s circle, which he considers a chore. But it does give him a chance to actually run on the track, which he did the night I was there. He was standing next to me one minute, sipping dolcetto high over the field of dreams, and the next minute I see him down on the track, running. Up on the jumbotron comes his face, 50 feet tall. They hand him a trophy and he hands it off to a jockey, who’s bigger than Jimmy. The whole thing took a minute, and then came the flashbulbs. Suddenly, he’s standing next to me again, like he just went to the bathroom.
He’s been over here a half dozen times and I’m not ashamed of it. I never know when he’ll show up. He runs in like this is a crime scene and he’s EMS, but with a limo. He sees me behind the grill and watches me work. He makes me proud of it because it seems to calm him down. And he knows one thing for sure. He won’t be paying for a sandwich. So I turn out to be a good deal. As for me, I love to watch him work - chasing money all over the place and figuring out how to spend it. But once you get a look at him, it’s clear that Jimmy is an all time champion. Cheer is all you can do.
What’s he got that you haven’t got? The shoes, for one thing. But in his case, he needs them. And what do I have that interests him so much, beside chicken cutlets? Beats me. All I’ve got is appreciation, which is maybe what all that money is about. I don’t hold it against him. I feel the opposite, since I was taught as a child that to be rich is glorious, which is what they teach over there.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Godfather II
No one wants to kill you more than the guy you made. That’s the most common bit of wisdom you’ll hear around the clubhouse. The guy who says it may be playing cards with you. Or he may be changing his socks. But the moment you hear it, you know that your loyalty is being tested, which is very uncomfortable.
I never say it. I just know it. And it never fails to amaze me how true it is. So why state the obvious? You just act on it. If the guy you made is smart enough, he’ll say it to you, and show that he loves you enough to admit it. But if he’s an idiot, and overhears it, he’ll act like he dropped a quarter.
The real advice is: never get made. Make all you want, but let no one make you. It’s the maker, not the made, who decides. That’s why they want to kill you, because they want to have it their way.
Part one, I learned from my mother. I think she saw it in my eyes the first time she beat the shit out of me, something that defined our relationship for a while. The second part came from my Godfather. He told me over a Big Mac, among the first served in the greater Philadelphia area on the day it was introduced in 1967.
We’d driven to Conshohocken with my very beautiful cousin from Modesto, California, who had been sent back east to live with Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary, attend St. Maria Goretti High School for Girls and wear a uniform 2500 miles from home, due to some sexual hi-jinks in that profligate State.
I was determined to seem as cool as anybody from California. We all were, which explained the two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun, with more clothes. I was in an all boys’ school, though I had just given up my uniform. I could wear jeans and a T-shirt because I was up at Central, where all the brainiacs went, which was Uncle Joe’s alma mater. It was public and it was free. We had a cyclotron built by the students in the basement and my Godfather had his name on the Honor Roll and in the trophy case.
I wouldn’t be getting my name writ in either of those places, but all I knew at the time was that if I could be anything like my Godfather, which on this particular evening included a pleasant drive through the leafy suburbs, my first ever trip to McDonalds, and the chance to sit with the most beautiful girl I ever saw, who was even less inclined to cover-up since we were cousins, then I’d be doing all right.
When he told me: never get made, he was referring to the Big Mac. But I apprehended the broader meaning – about which he was not coy. Where’s the joy in it? What of creativity? Who can possibly be interested in eating anything that can be endlessly replicated? he asked. As rhetorical questions go, it went, but I always stuck with my Godfather’s point of view, and it’s served over a million customers.
I never say it. I just know it. And it never fails to amaze me how true it is. So why state the obvious? You just act on it. If the guy you made is smart enough, he’ll say it to you, and show that he loves you enough to admit it. But if he’s an idiot, and overhears it, he’ll act like he dropped a quarter.
The real advice is: never get made. Make all you want, but let no one make you. It’s the maker, not the made, who decides. That’s why they want to kill you, because they want to have it their way.
Part one, I learned from my mother. I think she saw it in my eyes the first time she beat the shit out of me, something that defined our relationship for a while. The second part came from my Godfather. He told me over a Big Mac, among the first served in the greater Philadelphia area on the day it was introduced in 1967.
We’d driven to Conshohocken with my very beautiful cousin from Modesto, California, who had been sent back east to live with Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary, attend St. Maria Goretti High School for Girls and wear a uniform 2500 miles from home, due to some sexual hi-jinks in that profligate State.
I was determined to seem as cool as anybody from California. We all were, which explained the two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun, with more clothes. I was in an all boys’ school, though I had just given up my uniform. I could wear jeans and a T-shirt because I was up at Central, where all the brainiacs went, which was Uncle Joe’s alma mater. It was public and it was free. We had a cyclotron built by the students in the basement and my Godfather had his name on the Honor Roll and in the trophy case.
I wouldn’t be getting my name writ in either of those places, but all I knew at the time was that if I could be anything like my Godfather, which on this particular evening included a pleasant drive through the leafy suburbs, my first ever trip to McDonalds, and the chance to sit with the most beautiful girl I ever saw, who was even less inclined to cover-up since we were cousins, then I’d be doing all right.
When he told me: never get made, he was referring to the Big Mac. But I apprehended the broader meaning – about which he was not coy. Where’s the joy in it? What of creativity? Who can possibly be interested in eating anything that can be endlessly replicated? he asked. As rhetorical questions go, it went, but I always stuck with my Godfather’s point of view, and it’s served over a million customers.
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