All Advertising, All the Time

When I was growing up in New York, my parents attended the theater often and took me and my sister along to the hit musicals. The lights of Broadway were thrilling, as was every minute of every show. From the first notes of the orchestra to the exciting finale, the magical world of make-believe was always engrossing, capped with the crescendo of wild applause from the audience. I loved it. 

Hoping for that feeling again, a few years ago my husband and I bought season tickets to the Maine State Music Theater, located one town over. 

Despite great sets and talented performers, whatever magical feeling that may have surfaced during last night's production of West Side Story was squashed at the outset by an infomercial for the theater. The marketing director himself yammered on for too long, plugging the theater's sponsors. Among them were local bars and restaurants, a few banks, a curtain shop and a deli, their logos projected onto a black screen while the names of each were read aloud. The audience was invited to give each one of them a hand for their generosity. (Clap, clap, clap.)

The theater's marketing director doing his job -- onstage.

After that came descriptions of next year's roster, each one deserving more applause. Then special events -- clap, clap-- with discounts available in the lobby -- clap, clap, clap. I wonder -- does clapping for a bank or a grocery store differ from clapping for the actual performers? 

This boring litany happens at every show, diluting any enthusiasm one might have had going into the evening. But last night there was a bonus: Besides the pre-game yammering, a video shown during the intermission featured a giant talking head -- that of the Artistic Director this time -- spouting the same information we had heard 90 minutes earlier. Far from being magical, it was more like being at a used car auction, or maybe a bank foreclosure of mobile homes. (We're not going back.)

Jumping to Conclusions

Not every person who likes to cut up an avocado and spread it on a piece of toast for breakfast lives in Brooklyn, goes to yoga classes and has a pierced nose. These generalizations are popular among people who lack functioning brain cells and thus parrot what they hear on a podcast or see in a meme.

Summer is not always fun, full of picnics and swimming and sunshine as depicted in TV commercials. More often it's devilishly hot, severely buggy and overwhelmingly muggy, with devastating thunderstorms that can cause flooding and even death. Constant itching, asthmatic attacks, sunburns, profuse sweating and a debilitating lack of energy are the true signs of summer.

Not all white women named Karen are demanding, hate black people and think they know what's best in every situation. The two Karens that I know are both very soft-spoken and sweet, and if anything, self-deprecating to a fault, and certainly are not racist.

It's possible to be a Republican and still find fault with President Trump. Not all Trump voters think alike, which is vastly different from Democrats who all repeat whatever nonsense they heard Anderson Cooper or Rachel Maddow say on TV the night before.

Just because it is round with a hole in the middle, not everything sold as a bagel is actually a bagel. Some of them are imposters -- just round white bread with a hole in the middle. One way to tell is the presence of blueberries, cranberries or chocolate chips, all dead giveaways that you are not dealing with the real thing.

Owning a cat is not less work than owning a dog. Scooping their litter never ends. Neither does changing their water and feeding them food they will reject. Many, if not most, cats are incredibly needy and crave constant attention. Thinking they are aloof and standoffish just confirms that you never owned one.

What I Do For Love

My husband has a vegetable garden that he may love more than he loves me. At least, he loves every individual vegetable like a mother with a newborn child. Oddly enough, to show that I love him, I have to eat them. And eat them. And eat them. That means constant ingestion of whatever happens to be growing, be it broccoli, carrots, kale, lettuce, peppers, squash, zucchini, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets -- are you nauseous yet?

In the last couple of weeks, the zucchinis started coming at a rapid pace. That means zucchini omelets, grilled zucchini, fried zucchini, zucchini with pasta, zucchini and whatever. Despite a growing revulsion to the vegetable I have been very accommodating, but hey -- what are wives for? Until last week, when I was suddenly sickened with a severe case of -- excuse me for writing the heinous word -- diarrhea. Like really bad. Like shoot me bad.

It wasn't stopping and finally I did what I always do before calling a physician: I checked the internet. I learned that an abundance of zucchini can cause an abundance of diarrhea, especially in people with pre-existing stomach issues like IBS. That's me! There is even something worse called "zucchini poisoning" which I don't have yet but there's still time since I ate some for dinner last night before I googled it.

If we ever renew our vows, I am definitely inserting a line saying I don't have to eat the stuff he grows.

D.C. Hellscape

Ignorant people are outraged at President Trump's decision to call out the National Guard as peacekeepers in our nations' capital.  Following is a tiny part of why it's a good idea.

From 1970 until 2009 I lived in Washington, D.C. and just across the line in Maryland, with time off for good behavior (four years in Salt Lake City, a year in Baltimore and a year in Berkeley, California). During my D.C. days I was mugged by three teenage assailants in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket, had my car stolen from a repair shop three blocks from my home, had a glass entry door broken at night by a would-be intruder at my home six blocks from the Capitol and lost two friends to murder during their home invasion in the Logan Circle neighborhood. 

Another friend was raped by two men while she was pregnant with twins, her husband forced to watch, in their Georgetown ground-floor apartment. More recently, the young son of a close friend had his throat slit one night as he was about to enter his home in the trendy neighborhood of Adams Morgan, on the same street where Justice Sotomayor lived.

I did not have one friend or acquaintance who was not the victim of crime while living in D.C. My young son -- at the time he was 19 -- had his bike taken from him just blocks from the White House, by a group of thugs who surrounded him.

Our family endured three weeks of terror in 2002 during the reign of the so-called "D.C. Sniper," when 14 random people were shot down -- seven fatally -- on the streets of the city for no reason.

I walked my dog carrying a baseball bat at night and locked my doors when I took the trash down to the end of the driveway, even in daytime.

I never slept when my husband was out of town on business, despite the fact that we had an alarm system installed. 

That's why it's a good idea.

Drunk Post, Or I Don't Care About Your Grandchildren

I had two big glasses of wine with dinner, which is twice as much as I can handle, and so now I'm pretty drunk but had to get this down before I forget.

Some people are obnoxious and ridiculously self-absorbed. Tonight I had dinner with two of them. They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about themselves and their children and their children's jobs and then their grandchildren and how they were conceived, which was hard because their son is gay and married to a man. We had to hear every detail about the conception and the egg donors and the two surrogate mothers, and one of the fathers is the father of one child and the other is the father of the other one but they are still twins, etc., ad infinitum. ad nauseam, and then came the pictures. So many pictures.

People with grandchildren are the worst. They think people are interested, but nobody is.

Not one question was put to me. Not one shred of interest was directed at me or my husband or my husband's brother, who they know suffered a traumatic brain injury years ago.

Then it was over. Thank god. At least the food was good.

Note to self: Never go out again.

Artificial Unintelligence

If you ask me, I'm much smarter than AI. I'm also smarter than my phone and my computer and all those apps and Siri and Alexa and the whole lot of them. They think they know everything but they're wrong.

I'll give you an example. Not long ago, maybe an hour or so, I ordered a new pair of running shoes online. (Full disclosure -- I don't run anymore because I had a new hip installed nine years ago and my doc said that I could keep running if I wanted to but that I would "use up" my new hip and have to get it done again in like ten years, if I lived that long. So I walk in running shoes, okay?)

Anyway, I bought a pair and since then my computer and my phone have been flooded with ads for running shoes, including the brand I just bought. If AI is so smart, how come it can't grok that I don't need running shoes anymore since I just bought a new pair and maybe try to sell me some socks instead? Because it's dumb, that's why. It should be called AS for Artificial Stupidity.

Enough With the Talking Babies Already!

The whole thing of making videos featuring celebrities as babies was once a bright, new and original idea that was hysterical! The internet was instantly flooded with talking-baby versions of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and the casts of The Sopranos and The Golden Girls and My Cousin Vinny and Seinfeld. It was definitely worth a few hardy guffaws -- at first. But then it was everywhere, with everyone who could figure out how to do it doing it. And now it's just been- there-done-that annoying.

Sadly, that's what happens in a society where only a special few people possess the wits and intelligence to create something brand new. Through overuse by people scrolling desperately for anything different, ultimately it ends up on the trash heap of annoying copycats.

I hope and pray that happens to AI, and soon.

Metamorphoses

Tom Cruise in "Risky Business", 1983.

1) Conceived in 2004 by a group of college students, Facebook originally served as a catalog of who was "hot" and who was not, a precursor to today's dating websites like Tinder that was limited to Harvard students. In just 19 years it has turned into a miserable depository of anything and everything. Just this morning a friend of mine posted a video of a starving Israeli hostage held by Hamas inside a dark tunnel, emaciated and digging his own grave. 

2) Happy couples who are madly in love get married and then years later the husband murders his wife, or vice versa.

3) Actor Tom Cruise was once beloved by all, and now he is considered to be a creep into plastic surgery and Scientology who lies about doing his own movie stunts.

4) This blog was started in 2007 to be funny, and today I'm writing this.

Death Keeps Happening

Actress Loni Anderson, ex-wife of actor Burt Reynolds and former blonde bombshell on TV's WKRP in Cincinnati that aired from 1978-1982, recently died, just days shy of her 80th birthday. According to reports she had  battled a "serious illness" for the last year. 

Sad news, yes, but surprising? No. Yet her friend and fellow sitcom actress Barbara Eden, star of I Dream of Jeannie back in the day, posted online that she was "stunned" by the news. (BTW, Barbara is now 93 so she better be prepared for something even more stunning.)

How could anyone be stunned about the death of someone who was 80 years old and had cancer? Or even who was just 80 years old without cancer? Or even young with cancer? Or without cancer and any age? In fact, anyone at all?

We all need to get with the program and accept the fact that everyone dies -- at any time, at any age, for a variety of reasons. You can be sad about the death of a friend or loved one -- or depressed, suicidal, grief-stricken and bereft -- but seriously, you cannot be stunned, which basically means amazed, shocked, astonished, surprised, horrified and dumbstruck. 

Until we all learn to view death as a natural end to life, we will never feel relaxed.

Good Dog! (Bad Human!)

Reading the paper this afternoon, I came across two stories on the same page. One was about a teenager whose foot was badly burned at Yellowstone National Park when he stepped through the crusty earth near a boiling hot geyser. Having been to Yellowstone many times, I know that there are many signs warning visitors to steer clear of the geysers, as they pose a serious danger. So the kid must have ignored those signs and been foolhardy and oh well, too bad for him. I cared not a whit.

The next story was about a dog rescued in Parkland, Florida during a Category 5 hurricane last year by a state trooper who received a radio call about an animal trapped in rising waters. It went into great detail about how the dog's collar had gotten caught on a fence after his owner, a 24-year-old brat, left him tethered by the side of the road because he didn't want to take him along as he raced to escape the hurricane. 

I cried reading the second article, imagining the terror the dog had felt until his rescue. I hated the dog's owner, a lowly human, and was elated to read he had been tracked down and punished, and that Florida passed a law making the abandonment of animals during a storm a felony.

There is no punchline. People are truly the worst, and believe me, it's upsetting that I am one. Dogs are so much nicer, kinder, sweeter, more loyal and loving, except for pit bulls, whose inborn nature has been destroyed by generations of human owners.

How I'm Different From Kamala Harris

I'm not a moron.

I speak in complete sentences.

I'm never offended when people pronounce my name incorrectly.

I do not cackle.

I'm actually Jewish and my child never once called me "momala."

I told everyone that Joe Biden was demented.

How I'm Like Kamala Harris

I love a good green salad!

I never realized before yesterday just how much Kamala Harris and I have in common. It's uncanny, really, when you stop and think about it. For example, her rambling answers to an interviewer's questions are called "word salads," and I love all kinds of salads -- in fact, I eat at least one every single day, often two. 

Another thing is that her husband is Jewish, and so is mine! And talk about coincidences -- she was born in Oakland, California but lived in the neighboring city of Berkeley, and when I worked at the Oakland Tribune, I too lived in Berkeley. Also, while she is "leaving the door open" for a presidential run in 2028, everyone knows she will never be the President, and that's certainly true for me as well.

But perhaps the biggest similarity between us was revealed yesterday with her announcement that she won't be running for Governor of California next year (me either), explaining, "For now, my leadership and public service will not be in elected office." That is so me! In fact, just like Kamala, nobody knows what my public service is, or just how I'm a leader or to whom.

It's crazy that I never noticed all this before. It's like we're twins.

Satan Is Running the Show

Anyone who still believes that a merciful God is in control of things is delusional. I once thought that, but then I started reading the daily news. Obviously Satan has taken over our planet and has recruited a lot of willing soldiers. Be on the lookout for them; sometimes they are easy to spot.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Barbara Stanwyck in the 1948 film, "Sorry, Wrong Number"

This afternoon, while I was in the shower, I missed a call from our leading local medical conglomerate named, ironically, MaineHealth. It is described this way online: "MaineHealth is a not-for-profit family of high-quality providers and health care organizations committed to the health and well-being of the communities and people we serve."  Translation: Call us when you're sick. 

Anyway, as I said I missed the call but they left a message which threw me into a tizzy. It was from a nurse named Katrina at Portland Nephrology, saying I should call her back as soon as possible, along with a phone number. I had to Google "nephrology" and naturally freaked out thinking oh great, now I have kidney disease. Frantically scouring my brain for who might be a willing donor, I called back and of course reached nothing like a human, just a series of recordings saying how very important I am to everyone at Portland Nephrology.

I called four times, each time pressing another number and each time leaving a message along the lines of, "Am I dying? Do I need a transplant? What's wrong with me? Please call me back." All to no avail.

Finally I crossed that line in the sand and pressed the number for "If you are a physician trying to reach another physician." Annoyingly, yet thankfully, someone picked up right away. I explained my dilemma and a nice young man named Jason found my chart and said, "Nope, nothing here about you regarding nephrology. In fact, according to this chart you did not receive a call from us today."

"Oh, but I did, Jason." To prove it, I played him the phone message left by Katrina at Portland Nephrology on my landline. (Fortunately I had called him on my cell phone.)

"Hmmmm, that's odd. We are supposed to document every phone call and make notes, and there is nothing written here about a call to you from the nephrology team today. Would you like me to put Katrina on the line?"

"Please, no. Just tell her for me that she should be fired." And with that I hung up, angry at the error but also glad I hadn't had the wrong leg amputated, which happens.   At least for today I am fine kidney-wise, unlike whoever Katrina thought she was calling.
. 

Fat Is Not Adorable (Except In Babies)

This morning I made the mistake of posting a comment on Facebook concerning a video of an obese woman complaining that her "apron stomach" never looks good in any clothes she can find in stores. One commenter told her not to worry about it and that her stomach "is adorable." I pointed out that it was not adorable at all, and that being overweight signifies a serious addiction. Would anyone describe needle marks on a heroin user's arm as being adorable?

That same commenter found my statement "evil" and evidence that I have a "dark soul" with "a lot of work to do" to fix myself. Naturally I went straight to her personal page and saw from her posted photos that she is morbidly obese. What a surprise.

I don't care about her, but I do care about obesity. My entire childhood was spent in the enormous shadow of an obese sibling who was miserable because of her size, and who was confined to a wheelchair for the last ten years of her life -- she died recently at the age of 83 -- because she was so fat she couldn't walk. Get it?

In our twisted society, everyone hates being fat but nobody is allowed to say the word. People give themselves injections of pharmaceuticals, at great cost and with bad side effects, in their quest to avoid being fat. Children are getting fat earlier and earlier, with many developing diabetes by age 11.

Wake up, America -- we are now the fattest nation! If you aren't obese yourself, then help someone who is. 

Don't Say Nuthin' Bad About My Bibi

Okay, break's over. I was planning on staying away longer until I saw the cover of today's New York Slimes Sunday Magazine and lost my mind. (See photo.)

Not just as a Jew but as a human being, I find it repulsive, abhorrent, and downright libelous for a newspaper of record to publicly insinuate that Bibi Netanyahu, a tireless champion for his people and the state of Israel, is intentionally slaughtering innocent people in order to keep his job. 

To the contrary, he's likely sick of the whole thing and would welcome spending his remaining years lying on a beach somewhere enjoying his friends and family, and of course the company of all the freed hostages.

Bye For Now

This is my last post for a while. I'm taking a break from the Internet which
has become very sick and twisted, leading to feelings of depression,  disheartenment, disgust and more like that. 

Instead I'll be turning back to reading books for mental stimulation, starting with an old favorite shown here.

Hoping more people do the same. See ya!

Death Happens

Lately the news is full of famous, newly-dead people, including Connie Francis, Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Chuck Mangione and that actor who played the son on The Cosby Show, which I never watched so I don't know him but his name is Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Many online comments lament their passing, but my favorite one is, "So many celebrities are dying -- what's going on?"

I had to laugh, since "what's going on" is life as usual. With the exception of Warner, who drowned at the relatively young age of 54, the others were old enough to die a natural death, if you get my drift. Dying, a normal occurrence that ends living, happens to everyone. Still, we are always shocked, even stunned, when it happens to someone close to us.

The worst thing is when a doctor says we have limited time left, like a friend of mine who was recently told she had "months to live." First of all, doctors are not gods, despite what all their mommies think. And secondly, let's not forget the actress Valerie Harper who made a public announcement that she had three months to live and then lived another three years, even making a movie during that time.

What everyone reading this has, for sure, is right now. So go make the most of it.

Nobody Knows Anything

A couple of birthdays ago, my son gave me the gift of two plants growing in adorable pots he knew I would like -- one in the shape of a cat and the other an elephant. For no reason at all I posted a photo of them on my Facebook page and a friend responded with, "Elephant trunks should always be upward for good luck!"

Needing all the help I can get in the luck department, I decided to do some research before deep- sixing the clearly unlucky elephant planter. Good thing, since a Google search netted the following statements:

"The spiritual significance of an elephant with its trunk pointed upwards is associated with good fortune and luck. This belief stems from ancient civilizations and cultures, where the elephant was revered as a symbol of strength, power and stability." -- spiritual mojo.com

2. "An elephant with its trunk down is used as a symbol for good fortune and abundance. Placing an elephant with its trunk down on your kitchen table will invite fortune and abundance into your house." -- Angelicalbalance.com
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Grok Says: The Future Looks Bleak

Earlier today I admitted to my husband that I don't fully understand AI. This realization hit me after reading an article about it by a college professor who wrote that he "uses AI" in his classes. What the heck is it, I wondered aloud. Mitch suggested I try it and see for myself. 

So I logged on to Grok.com and asked it to write a blog post about the threat AI poses to the intelligence of young people who employ it as
an easy way out for writing assignments. The response came instantly in the form of three different results, all appearing on my computer in less than one minute from the time I typed my request. One of those is printed below:

If video games were the gateway to brain rot, AI is the whole dang apocalypse. Without the need to learn, question, or create, young people risk becoming drones who can’t function without their AI overlords. What happens when the power goes out, or the servers crash, or—heaven forbid—someone asks them to think on their feet? We’re raising a generation that’s smart on paper but clueless in practice.

The fix isn’t easy. Banning AI is like trying to ban calculators after they replaced slide rules—it’s not happening. Schools need to pivot, teaching kids how to use AI as a tool, not a crutch. That means emphasizing critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving—the stuff AI can’t fake (yet). Parents, too, need to step up, encouraging kids to wrestle with ideas the old-fashioned way: with effort, failure, and a little sweat.

AI’s here to stay, and it’s scarier than any 8-bit monster. Video games may have numbed a few brains, but AI’s got the power to turn a whole generation into intellectual zombies. We’d better act fast before “Game Over” becomes a way of life.

Even Grok thinks it's a problem! Now I'm more frightened than ever.

Antisemitic Lox?

This being Sunday morning, we were excited to enjoy some delicious lox with fresh bagels and cream cheese. But when we opened the package it seemed very odd -- soft and mushy and oh-so-orange. Turns out the ingredients list included four different food dyes: RED, YELLOW, BLUE and ORANGE! Yikes! Plus sugar, nitrates and a lot of other ingredients we could not pronounce.

WHO PUTS FOOD DYE AND SUGAR IN SALMON? HAMAS? THE AYOTOLLAH?

We rushed it back to the store for a full refund and exchanged it for some real fish.

Pedophile vs. Nincompoop

Be careful who you are seen laughing with at a party. It could be a felony.

The opposition is busy hunting for a shred of evidence that President Trump is a pedophile who had sex with underage girls on Jeffrey Epstein's private island years ago, long before he ever ran for public office. So far they have struck out. 

Here are two key points to consider:

1. Those "girls" knew what they were doing. They were not drugged or harmed, just paid. When I was 15, if anyone had offered me "the opportunity" to go to a private island to give rich old men sexual massages, I would have laughed in their face, run the other way and told my parents.

2. I would rather have a President who is a pedophile with keen political skills able to forge positive relationships with foreign leaders than one with a disintegrating brain who doesn't know what day it is, can't remember anything, and is a figurehead for secret, unknown, unelected people doing the job for him behind closed doors.

Our Sick Society

The entire United States has the mentality of a 15-year-old boy. Ample proof can be found in the ongoing interest in the life of Jeffrey Epstein, a dead man who never held public office, never had any incredible talent that catapulted him to the top of any charts, never appeared in a film or on TV, and as far as anyone knows was just a rich guy with lots of dirty old men as friends, all of whom liked to have sex with young girls.

Who cares? How is this news? So what if one famous person or another shared his prurient interests? How about we move on to other things, like nuclear weapons in the hands of crazy foreign leaders, rampant use of antidepressants, floods overtaking the planet, an increase of cancer and heart disease among young people, rising crime, lowering intelligence and the general addiction to technology that causes most people to spend their days playing inane video games online and their nights binge-watching television shows. 

Before it's too late, that is.

Bored Old Democrats

Unless you are an outdoors adventurer prone to hiking, kayaking, canoeing, camping, surfing, swimming or rock-climbing, Maine can be a boring place to live. Its largest city of Portland has a great symphony, one authentic art museum that never has any major exhibitions, some mediocre theater venues, one children's museum that looks good from the outside but having no kids at home I have not been inside, and one nutty museum devoted to pictures of Bigfoot that's funny one time, especially if you are stoned. Otherwise, cultural activities are nonexistent unless you count going to the movies or eating in restaurants "cultural activities."

So, you might be wondering, what do non-athletic people do for fun besides shop? I'm not sure what Republicans do, but Democrats stand on street corners for hours at a time, holding hand-made signs damning the President. In our little town of Freeport this silliness takes place on Tuesday mornings. In Ogunquit, a popular resort town an hour away, it happens on Thursday afternoons, something we learned firsthand yesterday. It was quite chilling.

Perhaps 40 oldsters -- or seniors or boomers or retirees or whatever you call them -- all of them overweight, sloppily dressed and looking like nut cases from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, lined Ogunquit's main street, waving signs that proclaimed "No Kings!" and "Dump Trump!" and more like that. One man approached our open car window and dropped in a two-sided printed card (see photos) full of incendiar false statements designed to sway my vote. 

Those poor people should learn to play Bridge to salvage their deteriorating brain cells.

How to Stop Dementia Before It Starts

I can't remember how long it's been since I read a book. In my younger days I read at least one a month. And I'm not alone; a recent publishing study revealed that 23% of adults in America say they have not read a single book in a year. What changed?

The Internet. Now, along with the rest of society, I waste my time watching funny videos, scrolling through Facebook, reading outrageous political lies posted by the enemy or playing Words With Friends. The results are likely cerebral detritus that is surely hurting me mentally, although I scored high on a recent online IQ test so there's hope for me yet.

Still reeling from the news that a good friend of mine had never even heard of the classic play, "Our Town," a production of which is staged somewhere in the United States every day, I wondered if not reading is the cause of dementia in some of those elderly folks lining the halls of nursing homes waiting for their medications and jello cups. (Note to my son: Shoot me first, please.) 

I suggest that everyone still able to read should do so. Stop following the lives of celebrities and pick up a book! A great choice would be the aforementioned "Our Town," by Thornton Wilder. It's immensely enjoyable, an easy read, and as a bonus it holds the secret to life. It will change yours.

Doing My Part

Kamikaze drones are quite popular in Russia.

Money makes the world go round. From the minute I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night, it's buy, spend, buy more, spend more, buy two and get one free, buy today only and get half-off. 

I realize that if I never turn on the TV, or my computer, or look at a newspaper or my phone, I could avoid all that. But then I would know nothing about what's going on in the world and would be caught by surprise if a random bomb-carrying kamikaze drone falls on my house, which could happen. Besides, capitalism is what keeps America humming, and we all must do our part. 

So I turn on the TV and am assaulted by commercials for things I apparently should not be without but somehow I am and still survive. Even something as innocuous as Words With Friends online bombards me with suggestions about how my life would improve immeasurably by purchasing things I don't have, never heard of or couldn't use if I had one. This is capitalism. 

This is also capitalism: Today I stopped at a deli after my gym workout left me hungry. I ordered a turkey and Swiss wrap with lettuce, tomatoes and mustard and a cup of black coffee. Later on, eating my purchase at home, I discovered that I had paid $12.50 for a wheat wrap stuffed with a fat wad of lettuce, a sliced tomato, a trace of Swiss cheese and a sliver of turkey the size of a playing card, making me see that you don't always get what you paid for. 

Still, I did my part, and so far the sky above my house remains drone-free.

Oh Those Hateful Jews

These days, antisemitism is making a comeback across the world, especially at Harvard University. Hopefully none of the Jews still living among those listed below, each of whom has contributed greatly to our society in the areas of the literature, fine art, theater, comedy, medicine and politics, will end up in a gas chamber anytime soon.

Saul Bellow

E. L. Doctorow

Phillip Roth

Estee Lauder

Howard Stern

Elizabeth Taylor

Marc Chagall

Herman Wouk

George Soros

Joseph Heller

Leonard Bernstein

George Gershwin

Isaac Asimov

Franz Kafka

J. D. Salinger

Lillian Hellman

Ayn Rand

Maurice Sendack

Sacha Baron-Cohen

Danny Kaye

Red Buttons

Michael Bloomberg

Ed Koch

Itzak Perlman

Morey Amsterdam

Seth Rogan

Albert Brooks

Robert Klein

David Brenner

Mort Sahl

Lenny Bruce

Jack Black

Goldie Hawn

Ben Stiller

Mark Spitz

Andy Kaufman

Jason Alexander

Eugene Levy

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Billy Crystal

Rodney Dangerfield

Don Rickles

Sarah Silverman

Milton Berle

Jon Lovitz

George Burns

Sid Caesar

Joaquin Phoenix

Ben Shapiro

Jared Kushner

Gilda Radner

The Marx Brothers

Jack Benny

Jerry Stiller

Issac Mizrahi

Gal Gadot

Jackie Mason

Adlai Stevenson

Mel Brooks

Carl Reiner

Volodymyr Zelensky

Richard Lewis

Larry David

Jerry Seinfeld

Billy Joel

Justice Felix Breyer

Art Garfunkel

Daniel Radcliffe

Justice Elena Kagan

Barbra Streisand

Scarlet Johansson

Neil Diamond

Gloria Steinem

Bob Dylan

Paul Rudd

Seth Rogan

Niels Bohr

Jake Gyllenhaal

Pink

Nora Ephron

Karl Marx

Norman Mailer

Leonard Cohen

Leon Uris

Madeline Kahn

Bette Midler

Harvey Keitel

Kirk Douglas

James Caan 

Jeff Goldblum

Alan Arkin

Richard Dreyfuss

Bella Abzug

Martin Landau

David Schwimmer

Natalie Portman

Willian Shatner

Leonard Nemoy

Michael Douglas

Lauren Bacall

Fran Liebowitz

Ruth Handler (inventor of the Barbie doll)

Lenny Kravitz

Susie Essman

Gene Simmons

Gov. Josh Shapiro (Ohio)

Gov. J. B. Pritzker ((Illinois)

Joan Rivers

Buddy Hackett

Bea Arthur

Elie Wiesel

Irving Berlin

Jerry Lewis

Richard Feynman

Mark Zuckerberg

Jon Stewart

Dustin Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman

Paul Simon

Tony Curis

Phillip Glass

Allen Ginsburg

Arthur Miller

Harold Pinter 

Neil Simon

Woody Allen

Harvey Fierstein

George Kaufman

Marilyn Monroe

Jesse Eisenberg

Mark Rothko

Stan Lee

Paula Abdul

Steven Spielberg

Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google)

Lisa Kudrow

Adrian Brody

Adam Sandler

Chuck Schumer

Cary Grant

Marc Chagall

Diane Arbus

Dr. Jonas Salk 

Albert Einstein

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Childhood's End

The following request appeared on a local Neighborhood Watch website recently. Initially I thought it was a joke or some sort of parody. but judging by the slew of positive comments it received I realized the query was taken to be 100% serious. It  left me feeling stunned, confused, angry and more than a little alarmed.

The mom wrote: "My 11-year-old son has come out as pansexual and aromantic. I am wondering if there are any support groups for similar LGBTQ kids in the area."

Had it been my own son I would have asked if there were any child psychologists nearby who specialize in this type of mental aberration in young children. But no -- this lady was looking for other kids who also had determined, at such a young age, that they wanted to have sex with people of all genders and sexual preferences, but without any emotional attachment.

I wish the government would open up all those mental institutions they closed years ago so I could go live in one for the rest of my life.

.

What About the French Fries?

Sage advice dictates that one should plan like you're going to live forever and live like you're going to die tomorrow. Okay, so then what do you do about the French fries? Because if I were going to die tomorrow I'd be having Nathan's French fries with ketchup and salt for all my meals. But if I do that and then live forever, I'm going to be fat and very unhealthy.

It's a quandary.