Month: March 2017

President Trump is using his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida as his “Winter White House”. This is not that unusual a practice, as previous Presidents have done the same thing (for example, Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente and Johnson’s LBJ Ranch in Texas). However, it is an extra expense for American taxpayers, because of all the security that has to be present wherever the President resides. If a President really needs time away to rest and think, we taxpayers are already paying the tab for Camp David in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park. It’s pretty nice, I hear. But, I digress. Who cares about a few million more dollars, anyway?

More importantly, Mr. Trump has imported to his Winter Palace in Florida a new twist on the Presidency that he has been using at the White House: no record of the visitors who come to see him. Almost to the day that he took office, the official registry of visitors has been “off-line”. The same goes with President Trump’s guests at Mar-A-Lago.

So, the press, which keeps track of the comings and goings of government officials, world leaders, lobbyists, etc., on behalf of the American public, has no way to guess what is going on in “smoke-filled rooms” and who might be doing the mischief. This total lack of transparency by the Trump administration is totally out-of-character for the Executive Office. In fact, there is precedence for transparency in the Oval Office, and it was demanded and established as a result of Republican Party concerns, years ago, that they were being left out of the loop.

President Trump has little regard for the customs and traditions of the office, as he has previously shown by ignoring the long-standing tradition of making his tax returns public, and then staffing his White House with relatives.

Some Democratic legislators have introduced a bill (which would be called the Mar-A-Lago Act) which would require the White House to make available to the public the President’s visitor logs…no matter where he opts to conduct business.

It is a shame that we need laws to force Donald Trump to do the right thing.

As if my Mom’s broken hip drama wasn’t enough, my wife Charlie decided to weigh in with her own health issues. So, the day my Mom was shipped from Vista to Murrieta for rehab, Charlie ended up in the hospital with chest pains. She had to stay the night for tests and observation, and, by the time we next talked the following morning, she had been shipped a few miles down the road to another hospital…where they had a bed.

Anyway, Charlie has been there for a couple of days now, and is expected to be released today (Friday). Initially, we thought that she might have some heart issue, or a pulmonary embolis (blood clot). But, it now appears that her chest pain might be either pleurisy (inflammation of the sac around lungs) or an intercostal muscle strain. Either one of those latter conditions have similar symptoms, like chest pain, difficulty breathing, etc.

It’s been a couple of crappy days for Charlie. She got virtually zero sleep for the initial 24 hours, and was in a lot of pain. But, today, she seems a bit perkier. I want her to come home and take a lengthy nap or two.

I’ve been killing time in hospital waiting rooms a lot lately, due to my Mom’s and my wife’s afflictions. The news has been interesting: the GOP replacement for Obamacare is up for vote; more street violence; goofy NBA antics; and, more wacky Trump news.

The Republicans had seven years to come up with a better health care package than Obamacare. The proposed replacement plan, introduced by House Speaker Paul Ryan and backed by President Trump, appears to be a steaming turd that no one likes. It’s going to offer less coverage and millions of Americans, previously insured through Obamacare, won’t be able to afford it. Even GOP conservatives don’t like it. As of this morning, after a day of furious lobbying by Speaker Ryan and arm-twisting by President Trump, the bill doesn’t have the votes to clear the House of Representatives. Congressmen are very cognizant of the fact that, if they vote to support this piece of shit, they may not be re-elected in two years. So, there’s a lot of teeth grinding and counting-to-ten going on in Washington D.C., as the deal-making prowess and prestige of the Prez is on the line (while ex-President Obama is probably high-fiving his buddies).

Some wacko in London killed a bunch of people. The perp was a British citizen who, apparently, was a young Muslim who had been radicalized in recent years. The event was used by some populists, including President Trump’s son, to point out, “There they go again!”, as if it was happening everywhere. Meanwhile, in the United States, a black man was savagely sliced to death by a white supremacist, who proclaimed his hate of black people. There was not a peep of outrage by politicians here, including total silence by the President or Donald Jr. That seems to be commonplace in our country: we get worked up about the threat of Muslim terrorism in our country, although we’ve experienced relatively few incidents here; but, at the same time, very little publicity or public outrage accompanies hate crimes in America, which are so commonplace that the public practically yawns when another one happens. Hate crimes, under the guise of law enforcement, are what generated the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

Speaking of our strange society, how about the latest “winning at all costs” tactics in the National Basketball Association (NBA)? Some teams have begun to rest superstar starters in regular season games so that they will be healthier when the playoffs begin a month or so down the line. It has never been uncommon for a player to sit out a game, occasionally, due to fatigue or to let some soreness heal. But, for teams to rest several otherwise healthy players…typically the team’s stars…in the same game is highly unusual. Because…why? Well, professional basketball is entertainment, played for the enjoyment of the ticket-purchasing attendees or fans using some sort of media to experience the game (like radio, TV, or streaming video). Lots of money is involved, whether it be fans paying to enter the stadium or a TV network paying the team to broadcast the game. When healthy players sit on the bench, laughing and cheering on the second-rate players who have taken their place, they are cheating the fans who support the sport. What kind of a message is the NBA sending to its fans when it allows this type of treason? Can you imagine a hard-working guy who pays hundreds of dollars for tickets to a game, long in advance, so that he and his son can see, in person, the great LeBron James in action…only to find out, at game time, that Mr. James, as healthy as a racehorse, will also be watching the game from the bench, because he wants to rest up for the playoffs a month down the road. What kind of marketing lunacy is this? How likely is Mr. Joe Sportsfan to advance purchase tickets in the future? Duh…probably not going to happen after he’s been rear-ended by LeBron James and Company.

The endless comedy show that is the White House got wackier and wackier this past week. Almost every day there are new revelations in the news about President Trump’s unusual connections with Russia and its leader, ex-KGB/kleptocrat/dictator Vladimir Putin. A stench arose during the campaign, got even more ripe when Trump was elected and began assigning jobs to people who had helped in during the campaign, and has fermented into Limburger cheese as more info has been leaked to the press about strange liaisons, communications intercepts, “buddy” deals between Russia and some of Trump’s advisors, etc. There is going to be some sort of government investigation about the issue of election tampering by Russia (at Trump’s behest?), but it’s not a sure thing yet who will do the investigating. The President has tried to sidetrack this matter by claiming (without any proof) that former President Obama tapped phones in Trump Tower. No evidence has been forthcoming, so another embarrassment for the Prez. Probably at his behest, the GOP congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee (how about that for an oxymoron?), tried to give Trump some cover by claiming that the NSA might have accidentally spied on Trump’s gang. But, today, after being ridiculed by everyone in Washington D.C., Congressman Nunes backed off of that claim, leaving the President to dangle in the wind.

Donald Trump should save face by using President George W. Bush’s tactic, with regard to his Obamacare replacement effort, by simply declaring “Mission Accomplished”, and move on to his next project…the Federal Budget. Of course, that is where things will get very dicey…where the rubber meets the road in Washington D.C.

Remember that Donald Trump was not a darling of the GOP when he campaigned for President. In fact, many Republican electeds declared their opposition to him or simply declined to support him or campaign with him; they had their own campaigns to run and win. Every Congressman who was elected made promises to voters, and those promises (and goals) could be very different than the red-button issues that populist Trump campaigned on. A Congressman’s first priority, since he must run again in two years, is to support, via the Federal Budget, things that his constituents want to occur. President Trump is going to find that his grand dreams (like building a 30′ wall at the Mexican border, increasing military spending, defunding the U.N., and savaging the budgets of many federal agencies) may not sit that well with GOP congressmen, who control the government’s purse. Most elected officials in Washington D.C., including both Republicans and Democrats, have declared the President’s budget submittal “Dead on Arrival”. So, it should prove to be a very interesting Spring and Summer for Trump and Company, as they learn a thing or two about how “The Art of the Deal” plays in a governmental setting.

It should be interesting.

 

 

 

Well, it happened. Just what I thought. Nobody listened. Thought they were smarter than the average bear. Etc.

My almost 89 year-old Mom, living by herself in Vista, California, fell down this past week and broke her hip. She wrote a check that her body couldn’t cash, and…God cashed it.

In several emails and text messages over the past five months, I cautioned my brother and two sisters that my Mom should not be living alone. She has dementia and is pretty unstable on her feet. The four of us ganged-up on Mom and got the DMV to revoke her driving license. But, the other three didn’t want to hear my concerns about Mom’s safety in her own home. They assured me that they had installed video surveillance and would have a neighbor drop by occasionally (to see if Mom was still breathing, I guess!). Of course, that type of Mommy Care would not/did not preclude her from tumbling down the steps into her garage.

Anyway, we are now in crisis mode, trying to find a rehab facility and overnight nursing care for my Mom. It looks like we’ve got a facility lined up in Murrieta (my sister Claudia, her guy Ted, and I visited yesterday), and I am trying to find a traveling caregiver who can babysit my Mom from 7pm to 7am each day for a couple of weeks. I hope we can find someone, or I might have to take the red-eye shift.

I brought up the idea of an Assisted Living Facility (for Mom) many months ago, but my brother and sisters wanted to try the Home Care option; i.e. she’ll be happy there, and “what trouble can she get into?” Of course, that was way back (last week) when she was in Category 1, ambulatory with 4″stride and early dementia. She has now graduated to Category 2: will just barely shuffle along, when rehab is finished; and, she appears to be more affected by the dementia and will be suffering from depression when the pain meds wear off. Mom will now require someone to watch her, even when she’s sleeping.

As expensive as the ALFs are, they might be a bargain over 24-hr nursing care in Mom’s own home. Besides, she will have nothing to do except stare at the walls. Her beloved hobbies of gardening and home redecorating are, all of the sudden, not practical for her condition. To make matters worse, Mom’s home is at least an hour’s drive from any of the four children, which makes it impractical for regular visitation. And, the few friends that she had left in the neighborhood will not want to take a wheelchair-bound, dementia-suffering buddy to the WalMart or the movies. Those days are done.

I have done research on five ALFs in my area. My brother and sisters didn’t want to hear anything about that, so…maybe now it’s their turn. Except that they now have only 21 days to figure out what they want to do.

This is going to cost significant money, something that they are loathe to consider. But, it’s now “nut cuttin’ time” as they used to say up on the ranch. Time to get real.

As I have mentioned previously, Charlie and I have been busy for the past month or so. Bookkeeping business is booming, tax season is in full swing, we’ve been getting some medical issues resolved, and we’re potty training a Boston Terrier puppy. Other than that, we’ve been bored stiff.

Friday morning, at 4:30 a.m., Bear Creek lost all electric service due to some calamity in the underground utility vault across the street from our main gate. What was originally estimated to be a four-hour repair turned into a 13-hour nightmare, with electrical service restored at around 5:30 p.m.

Of course, Charlie Manning Bookkeeping was down for the count all day. My wife and I decided early in the morning that we would use the time to do some gardening tasks. So, we spent all day rejiggering our entryway (I hand-placed about 500 lbs of beach pebbles), harvesting succulents from Charlie’s backyard nursery for some friends, and potting some new plants that I bought at Lowe’s. What a physical day it was; I haven’t been this sore or tired in many years! We both felt like we’d been run over by a truck. And, we couldn’t even take a hot shower afterward, dammit.

That night, after power was restored, we discovered that our Frontier FIOS service (i.e. landline telephone and fax, Internet, and TV) was, somehow, not restored! This left us totally in the lurch, in terms of no TV entertainment and no ability to conduct Charlie’s business! I spent 1-1/2 hours on Friday night yelling at Frontier people, demanding that they get someone out to our home to fix their system. It was to no avail: they told us that they wouldn’t have a repair guy in our area until Wednesday the 15th, five days hence. We were screwed.

If you know my wife, Charlie, you can probably picture her mood at this catastrophe. Not good, to say the least. We are lucky that her ticker didn’t go south on her. (It’s Sunday, as I write this, and the jury’s still out on that.)

Of course, by this time, it was the weekend, and our usual go-to guys for computer tech stuff were unavailable for hands-on help. So, we had to jury-rig our business setup in order to keep things afloat. I restructured our office network to a WiFi system, bought some WiFi adapters for the two office desktops, and set up a bare bones contraption utilizing our portable WiFi hotspot that we use when we’re on the road in the RV. This has enabled us to continue our bookkeeping and tax work, albeit it a little clumsy and slow, although we have no fax and we’re having to use our travel printer (Epson) instead of our heavy duty Biz Hub commercial printer. It sucks.

All of this is a pain in the neck, but I worked on four of Charlie’s clients today (Sunday), while she was involved with four tax returns.

The biggest bummer is that we have no TV at night. We used to grumble about the lousy pickens from the 500 channels available (HaHa), but it’s really boring sitting in bed staring at magazines, reading books on the Kindle, or having to kill time by writing a stupid blog like this. We’re bored stiff!

The worst part will come tomorrow, when the normal business day resumes, and Charlie’s cell phone (not landline!) starts ringing with client brushfires, antsy tax clients, etc. We’ve got a bunch of appointments for stuff this week, plus I now have to hang around and make sure that the Frontier guys, when they do show up, don’t screw the pooch. Everything has to work 100 percent, perfect, before those bastards leave the property. I may pay our computer tech to be on-hand to supervise the Frontier fix-it crew. More $$$.

And, then, I’m going to write a nasty letter to Frontier and demand a one-week rebate on my bill, plus expenses, plus pain and suffering.

It’s going to be The Week from Hell.

 

Well, I’ve gone and done it. Something I swore I’d never do. I now have a real, live GUN in my house.

Charlie and I needed a deadly weapon in the condo about as much as we needed a third Boston Terrier. We got one of each, anyway.

Actually, it’s tax season, and Charlie took the gun in partial payment for some tax work on behalf of a guy named Howard. We’ve know him for quite awhile, and he’s a retired fellow with little disposable income. Howard asked if we would take $250 off his tax prep bill in exchange for the gun.

Charlie and I had talked a few times over the past couple of years about security when we are in the RV, out in the boondocks (i.e. like Montana, Northern California, etc.). I guess there’s always the possibility that some crazed nutjob or a real criminal could try to break into the RV when we are asleep. The dogs would surely alert us, but, as we are at the rear of the coach, and there’s only one way in and out, we’d have no means to defend ourselves, and nowhere to run. So, theoretically, it might be a good thing to have some deterrence available.

Anyway, we went for the deal with Howard, and now possess a .45 semi-automatic pistol. According to Howard, if you hit someone anywhere on their body with a .45 slug, they are going down. Included in the deal was a holster, an extra clip, and several boxes of .45 ammo. (I have an ex-cop friend who later examined the gun, gave me some handling lessons, and said that $250 was a good deal.)

(BTW,  Howard told me a story about using a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol once in his life. He claimed to have been part of the invasion force in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs fiasco back in 1960. His group was trying to secure an airfield when a Cuban soldier appeared and shot Howard through the mouth, the bullet breaking a front tooth and exiting through his cheek. Before Howard could react to his own injury, he shot the guy with his .45 semi-auto and he said that the impact lifted the Cuban clean off the ground, and then Howard dispatched him with some additional shots. I suspected that it was a bullshit story, but Howard showed me the scar on his cheek, and I later confirmed that there were some American C.I.A. “advisors” on the ground at the Bay of Pigs. Howard looks to be in his late 70’s, so…I guess it’s possible.)

I have not yet fired the weapon. We will be travelling through Nevada and Utah on our road trip this year, so I will probably have plenty of opportunities to visit a shooting range and/or blow up some tin cans out in the desert.

If you’re in the area, steer a wide berth.

In the famous Aesop fable, the shepherd boy amused himself, and annoyed townsfolk, by shouting “Wolf!” when the flock of sheep was actually safe. Eventually, a wolf did show up, and the shepherd boy’s alarms went unheeded. The moral: Nobody believes a liar…even when he’s telling the truth!

It has been said that credibility is like virginity. Once you lose it, you can never get it back.

Credibility is a part of someone’s character that is as valuable as gold, part of a person’s reputation that they must safeguard at all cost. When you run into someone who lacks credibility, you become disbelieving, skeptical, distrustful, suspicious, doubting, and cynical. It is easy to “tune out” such a person and become totally uncooperative with him.

Helen Thomas, who was a respected White House correspondent for 50 years, and covered the administrations of every President from Eisenhower to Obama, once remarked: “I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided that they had no credibility.”

Yeah, I remember that liar.

Thinking back on the Great Depression and World War Two, where would we be if not for the confident, calming, and reassuring fireside chats that President Franklin Roosevelt had with the American people, and the fiesty, cheerleading speeches that Prime Minister Winston Churchill made to Britons facing the Blitzkrieg? These leaders could be believed, they could be trusted, and, therefore, citizens would lay down their lives for the cause. Roosevelt and Churchill promised that the Axis powers would be destroyed, they were, and the world was saved. These guys had credibility.

Contrast that leadership with the spectacle that is now occurring in Washington D.C. We have, in President Donald Trump, an individual who would lie even if the truth would serve him better. Seemingly every day, a new tweet, press release, or speech contains “manufactured truths”, “alternative facts”, baseless gossip, or unsubstantiated wingnut conspiracy theories. This is the basis, evidently, of policy making in the Trump era. Take a lie, wrap it up in bombast, and float it out into the media to see what happens.

Predictably, the hoax is identified, within hours. Then, there is outrage by President Trump, or by his spokespeople, that anyone would doubt the provenance of the story.

This goes on, day after day. It’s been almost two months now, since the Inauguration, and the American public continues to be barraged by this constant stream of lies and “fake news”.

It’s incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it in the past 50 years. A number of “fact checking” news sites have cropped up over the past year, to vet the latest whoppers told by the President and his gang of liars. The scary thing about all of this is that the lies are so easy to discredit. Within minutes of a Trump tweet, speech, or press release, journalists and researchers are able to quickly discredit the story as a total fabrication, an exaggeration, a fanciful urban myth, juicy gossip, or a poor understanding of something that actually happened.

Writers for Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon wait breathlessly for each day’s treasure trove of material. Comedians and political cartoonists never had it so good. It’s like stealing. Our President is mercilessly skewered daily, in our country and others.

The ongoing D.C. Circus would be funny if it weren’t so damaging to our country. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” That is what seems to be going on right now, and it’s hard to discern…why? Are our leaders just plain stupid, or is there something deeper going on here? It’s like we’ve turned the family car over to our 10 year-old child, and we’re watching, helplessly, as he demonstrates that he has no idea how to operate the thing.

 

What can possibly be gained by throwing all credibility to the wind? Our allies must be alarmed, for sure, to see such amateurish behavior by the so-called “Leader of the Free World”. But, as importantly, how can our allies trust or believe anything that President Trump might tell them at this point. Whatever credibility he had coming into the White House has all but been wiped out by his administration’s Keystone Cops behavior. How do you “ally” with someone who doesn’t know truth from fiction, or, worse, doesn’t care?

If our President was to call a world leader tomorrow and beg for help to resolve a crisis, how would that leader know that the “crisis” was real? Who would want to get into bed with someone who is careless with the facts?

President Trump comes from a background where he was the unquestioned leader of a family business. He reported to no one, and didn’t have to play team ball with anyone. He gave orders based upon his understanding of reality, and others carried out those orders. The fact that Mr. Trump left a number of bankruptcies, failed marriages, and angry creditors, business partners, employees, consumers, and skammed students in his wake…may testify to his understanding of reality. He seems to be ignorant of the relationship between facts and truth.

Any President needs credibility to be a world leader and to get anything of consequence accomplished through Congress. He needs the American public to believe and trust him.

Right before our eyes, President Trump is rapidly depleting any reservoir of credibility that he ever had. And, amazingly, he doesn’t seem to care.

What is he thinking?

It’s an overcast, cold, and rainy day today. Nothing much going on except that I’ve got to take Baby to doggie obedience school at 1:45 p.m.

On a weekend day like this in the past I used to be glued to the TV set, watching sports and munching on grab food. I rarely do that anymore, although I still love the grab food. Sports don’t have the appeal for me like they used to, I guess.

We have been spoiled here in the Los Angeles market. There are lots of sports teams (collegiate and pro), and quite a few of them have been outstanding. We’ve enjoyed the Dodgers and the Angels, the Lakers, the Rams, the Raiders, the Kings, and the Ducks. Our collegiate teams the USC Trojans and the UCLA Bruins have won many national championships. So, regardless of the time of year, there’s always some kind of quality sporting event going on in this area, and, if you’re a sports fan, you’re in heaven.

I used to follow all of these teams, and more. But, as I’ve gotten older, my interest has paled, even when we’ve had local champion teams. I think it may be a product of over saturation of the television market (too many games on TV), boredom (“seen that, done that”), and the off-field/financial angles that seem to now dominate sports reporting.

There is so much sports product on network and cable TV nowadays that it’s not special anymore. It is now possible to watch professional and collegiate sports 24 hours a day, and, really, most of the events are meaningless. In Major League Baseball, each team must play 161 games before qualifying for the playoffs, which most teams don’t make. In professional basketball, the number is 82 games, and, realistically, there are only about a half dozen teams that have a chance to win the NBA title. There is now a Golf Channel on cable TV which broadcasts men’s and ladies tournaments from all over the world…24/7. Pro football has many fewer games, per team, which makes each game more important. But, there are a lot of teams, and most of them are not very good.  Again, there’s maybe a half-dozen teams that are capable of winning the championship, and the winner will usually be the one which has the fewest injuries. And, to be honest, there are just a few top flight organizations and coaches who seem to have contending teams every year. So, it’s gotten a bit stale, seeing the same teams each year vying for the Lombardi Trophy.

I’ve been lucky to have been alive and to have followed sports when many of the immortals plied their trades. Guys like Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretsky, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Sandy Koufax, etc. These are guys who, when they were “on”, were virtually unbeatable, like a grown man playing with boys. And, once you’ve seen masters like this at work, it is difficult to stomach mediocrity. And, really, that’s what TV offers up on a weekly, if not daily, basis…games involving well-meaning, but marginally-skilled journeymen players. There used to be a joke about the Mendoza Line in baseball. It had to do with players who couldn’t hit better than .215 (batting average). Not many players like that lasted very long in the Major Leagues when I was young; now, every team has a bunch of them. Same with basketball, which I played in high school. Anyone who couldn’t make 70 percent of their free throws was tossed from the team. Nowadays, in the professional leagues, there are players who can’t make 50 percent…and some of those stiffs are in the frigging NBA Hall of Fame! Go figure.

Probably the biggest factor in my blase feeling about sports nowadays is all of the extraneous information that we’re fed (by the media) about the athletes. We now know about their childhood issues, police record, domestic violence complaints, drug usage, the partying they did in the wee hours prior to a championship game, the trash-talking that they do on the social media, the alleged performance-enhancing drugs that they’ve used to give them an edge over their competitors, and every financial detail about their performance contract and the status of their current negotiations. We are now more likely to know the name of a player’s agent than we are to know what his batting average is. Tom Brady, who will probably retire as the best pro football quarterback of all time, will likely be known more for Deflategate, which is a bogus scandal involving jealous teams and the media which fanned the flames of outrage over a non-issue. But, it “sold newspapers”, as they used to say.

Talk about nonsense…here’s another non-issue that’s dominating sports talk radio:

Right now, the NFL Combine is in full swing. It is something that football junkies pay a lot of attention to in the off-season, but it is the precursor to the NFL Draft, another off-season event designed to maintain interest in pro football. The Draft is the mechanism by which the pro teams re-stock their rosters with young players coming out of college. Even though each team has videotape of every college game, and can see how each prospect performs against live opponents, there seems to be the need for “metrics” on each player before the Draft. So, the Combine is held to measure how fast each player can run, how high they can jump, how many reps they can do with a 200-lb set of barbells, etc. It’s almost as if their documented, live performance in real, competitive games is meaningless…the metrics are more important, somehow. Supposedly, the pro teams’ management pay a lot of attention to these things and their decision-making process is quite sophisticated. Nevertheless, each year most teams have great difficulty in predicting future stars. Some of the “can’t miss” Combine  immortals have turned into colossal Draft busts that have cost NFL teams dearly.  Quarterbacks have been particularly hard to evaluate, probably because it’s not easy to measure what’s in a guy’s heart and between his ears. Prospects who can throw the football 70 yards on a rope, who are as indestructible as a tank, and who can run like deer, have often turned out to be nothing more than workout freaks. One guy like that cost the Raiders $200 million, as I recall. On the other hand, the quarterback with perhaps the least impressive “measurables” in the history of the Combine was none other than…Tom Brady, who will retire someday as the best professional quarterback of all time. He was the 199th player to be selected in the 2000 NFL Draft. Go figure.

Nevertheless, the NFL Combine and the upcoming NFL Draft will dominate sports media programming for months to come. It’s just filler, a bunch of nonsense that has little value. I’ve grown tired of it all.

I listen to the radio a lot when driving around town. Usually I will listen to Sirius XM, and, particularly to oldies from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80′, and 90’s, with some Willie’s Roadhouse (classic Country Western) thrown in. But, I’ve heard all the songs before, so, when I get bored, I will tune into sports talk radio to kill some time. I’m really looking for news (usually about the Lakers or Dodgers), but usually have to put up with a bunch of ex-jocks yammering about some tangential sports story, like Joe Blow’s contract negotiations, something some player did at a nightclub at 2:30 a.m. last night, or some freak who bench pressed 52 reps at the frigging NFL Combine. The talk radio guys (usually there’s more than one in the studio sound booth) argue and trash-talk and opine on a variety of topics which may or not be about sports. It’s typically a large waste of my time, except, like in gold mining, a nugget comes along once in awhile to rescue the “segment”. Colin Cowherd is particularly cogent; I like listening to his ideas and rationales and occasional rants. Most of the other hosts just seem to like the sound of their voice.

I saw no televised baseball games this year, watched one entire NFL game, saw some snippets of Laker games, and tuned into a couple of golf tournaments. I did not watch the Olympics, at all. I have not paid to attend a sporting event in the past dozen years, at least. I dropped out of my Fantasy Football league due to boredom; just didn’t want to check the scores each Monday to see how I’d done.

One of the sports radio channels has a program on every Sunday that I really enjoy in lieu of going to church.  This program has very little to do with sports, really, because it is about gambling. Well, OK, it’s sports gambling, but that’s not the issue. It’s about separating you from your money, and the host is some Brooklyn-sounding, Italian “wiseguy” named Danny Vee. His hour-long talk show is, essentially, one endless commercial which purports to provide the listener with life-changing, sure-fire techniques to double, triple, and quadruple his (or, is it Danny’s ?) bankroll. I love listening to this ballsey pro. He pitches his bullshit breathlessly for sixty minutes, explaining that, unlike the amateur sports bettors, he has impeccable “information” that even the Las Vegas casinos can’t acquire. His sources are so good, Mr. Vee says, that he will provide free “winners” to listeners as his bona fides, if they will just call his 800 number and listen to his pre-recorded message. (This is the deal: If the “winner” turns out to be a loser, you get next week’s slamdunk “winner” for free.) The host brings in guest touts, as well, to provide expert testimony. The funny thing is that they sound alike…a bunch of New York greaseballs with the same easy-money, fast-buck pitch for sure-thing results, “better than the stock market”, etc. According to Danny Vee and his crew, “It’s a no-brainer”, and the only limit to the amount of money that you can earn is the amount you bet. Danny even has higher quality information for his Platinum clients…the really big bettors, the “Whales”. (That makes sense; it would be inappropriate to give the hard-on-their-luck losers that good information, lest they climb their way out of the gutter.)

Anyway, my interest and amusement in this sport radio offering demonstrates just how bored I’ve become with sports, in general. That’s quite a contrast from the good old days: I can remember vividly sitting in my bed at night, with transistor radio and earplugs, listening to the Dodger game, and keeping a scorecard, marking a “K” for every Sandy Koufax strikeout.

Oh, to be young again!

 

 

 

I have written three books since I retired. One was an autobiography (up to retirement), one was about religion, and the other was a 12-month chronology of events during retirement (about ten years ago). None of these masterpieces was meant for publication; rather, just something I could pass along to my grandchildren, if they were interested.

I’m thinking about doing another book. This one would be about life in the early 21st century, with general observations about technology, culture, politics, human relations, etc. I might call it “Musings” or something. I can see someone in 100 years looking back at our primitive society and wondering, “What were they thinking?”. In that future state, robots with artificial intelligence might perform most of the work on Earth. Humans at that point might ask themselves, “How did people function when they actually had to think and work?”

Anyway, if I get energized, or laid up for a spell, maybe I’ll start typing again, big time.

Speaking of health issues, our neighbor Clark Pace had a “heart attack” recently. Or, at least that’s what we all thought until his doctors determined that it was probably a pulmonary embolis (that he survived!). He’s doing fine now. Another close friend, George Knapp, had the real deal last week, and had to endure a triple-bypass open-heart surgery. He is a card-playing/bowling buddy of mine, and a fellow critic of the Master HOA Board of Directors here in Bear Creek. I love to talk with him about community politics. He’s quite knowledgeable; he once served on the Master HOA Board. I did a couple of stints on such Boards; once on the Oak Tree HOA, and another time on the Country Club Villas HOA, where i was President for a short while. It’s a thankless task.

JayJay, our male Boston Terrier, is visiting the Vet eye doctor today for a follow-up exam. JayJay had a bad case of conjunctivitis and the beginning stages of cataracts in both eyes. I’ve been dosing him with three types of eye drops for about a month, and the whites of his eyes are not red anymore. I think he can see pretty good at this point; if I held out a hot dog in my hand 20 yards from him, I’m pretty sure he’d be on it in a flash. We watch a lot of veterinary “reality” shows on TV, and it appears that dogs can function pretty well with poor or, even, no eyesight, just like they can get around pretty well if a limb is amputated. The Jay Man  is 10 years old now, so we can probably anticipate him losing sight in his left eye within the next 2 or 3 years. We’ll all deal with it. As long as he doesn’t lose his sense of smell and taste, he’ll be a pretty happy guy.

Speaking of that, JayJay has begun to rough house with Baby, our Boston puppy, just like Booger has been doing. The three of them spent about 20 minutes this  morning playing together, “fighting” over a squeek toy, and wrestling back and forth. The puppy has unlimited energy and is quite feisty, gives as good as she gets, and really wears out the old fogies. They had another play session later in the morning. Booger is now taking a well-deserved nap while JayJay is at the eye vet.

I am looking forward to the day (please, Jesus!) when Baby is fully housebroken. Then she can do what the other two dogs do most of the time…nap…in various spots around the property. Booger is sunning herself out in the backyard as we speak.

Charlie’s tax season chugs on. She’s doing several a day now, while son Tim and I try to keep her regular bookkeeping up to date. At 71 years old, my wife has tremendous stamina to do what she does, although, at times, she swears at the computer like a longshoreman. Her main communication technique during tax season seems to be yelling (ha ha), but we put up with it because we love her and know that she loves doing people’s taxes and helping them maximize their deductions and tax return. Only six more weeks…

We are planning to take a well-deserved vacation on April 29 to join our son Jeff and his wife Carol in Cancun for a week. One of the things that we will do there is a short trip to, and overnight stay at, the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. Our hotel there is right adjacent to the national park, so we will  be able to leisurely roam the archaeological site in the late afternoon and in the morning, when the tour bus crowds are not on site. I’m looking forward to it! We will also be goofing off at our Cancun hotel for six days, good food and drink, and lounging next to the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

I suspect that the arthroscopic surgery that my right knee needs won’t take place before our RV road trip, which begins on May 29th. I will have to do my hiking and dog-walking with the aid of regular doses of Aleve and Norco. We will be back in the Southern California area by mid-August, so perhaps my surgery can happen at that time. I am getting tired of the painful, stiff knee. It’s a bummer. However, I can still function. I’m bowling two days a week, and I do just fine if I take the Aleve/Norco regime when I arise on my bowling days. I will, hopefully, be able to do my projected Grand Canyon hike (South Rim to river and back, in one day) with my friend Jason and his girlfriend Holly in early June. I might need a couple of extra pills that day!

We just got some good news today. Our granddaughter Jessica, who is in her second year at Cal Baptist University, has been accepted into the Nursing Program, beginning with her third year. She’s an outstanding student, and always has been. She should breeze through that program.

Charlie and I watched the Oscars telecast a few nights ago…all by ourselves, for the first time in decades. I fixed some nice appetizers and we munched on them, in bed, surrounded by our little doggies. I thought the new host, Jimmy Kimmel, was quite good. The show ran along pretty well until the end, when the Best Picture award was botched. I wonder whether the Price Waterhouse guy had a job the next day?

Just sayin’: Why is it that entertainment folks spend so much time congratulating themselves for the work that they do? There are now scores of “awards shows” for actors and musicians and tradespeople involved in production. What other vocations do this? It always amazes me that, at the end of a movie, the list of folks involved in the production scrolls up the screen for at least five minutes, acknowledging everyone, including the guy who brought sandwiches to the set. No other industry does this, do they? Just imagine if everyone involved in the production of your family car had to be listed somewhere…it would fill a telephone book! When you buy a tomato, perhaps every field hand who was involved (planting, fertilizing, cultivating, harvesting), the guys at the processing plant, the boys who load the trucks, the overweight redneck truck driver who brings the product to your market, the green grocer who arranges the tomato in the produce department, and…dare we forget…the checker and the bag boy who actually deliver the product to the consumer…shouldn’t all of these hard-working folks get the recognition that they richly deserve? I think there may be a need for another awards show. I can see it happening now: Sam Walton handing out the Farmie Award to Jose Gonzalez, who was the Tomato Picker of the Year. And, then, Jose’s heartfelt acceptance speech, where he thanks his employer, his family, his agent, and maybe even President Donald Trump…for not building The Wall. (HaHa)

(Almost as if on cue, dozens of ICE agents storm into the awards ceremony and arrest Jose and the other 400 illegal Latin Americans attending the show. Senor Trump has the last laugh.)