Real Music & Real Estate . . .

I charge a $20 late fee if I don’t get the rent by the seventh day of the month. Some tenants regularly pay the $20 late fee, because $20 is nothing compared to, say, a credit-card late fee.

I had a tenant who promised to pay on the 11th. He changed to the 15th. Then the 20th.  Today — October 29 — I have just one late tenant.  She said she’s not paying because she had a stroke and is broke.  She sounded pretty good on the phone for a stroke.  I asked my wife, a former RN, about that: “Can you talk right if you just had a stroke?”

My wife, Alice, said, “It depends what part of the brain it affected.”

One guy had his foot cut off due to diabetes. That’s a decent excuse.

I generally don’t allow late payers to slide into the next month. “Mom is sick . . . My grandmother died . . . I switched banks and they messed up my account.”

Why didn’t you call me?  Why am I calling you?

Maybe I should charge more than $20. Some landlords charge by the day, like $10/day.  But life is too short for that kind of intense bookkeeping.

I have a tenant who has been late every month for 30 years.  I hope I outlive him to get his final month’s rent.

Sometimes I lean too hard on the tenants and get no late fee — no rent.

—

Yiddishe Cup is a soul band, Jewish and otherwise.  Check out our version of Aretha’s “Respect.”  We play a wide range of American pop music.  Please don’t boot us out of your wedding after the hora.  Hey, we’re better than those other wedding bands!  We’re slicker than schmaltz laced with WD-40.  Our newest singer is Tamar Gray.  She works the crowd.  Fun . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjzxJW3y78

share

Yiddishe Cup played four Century Village retirement communities in Florida.  Each Century Village had a theater the size of a basketball arena. Other acts on the boards were Debby Boone, Dr. Ruth, Jack Jones, “Jim Bailey as Judy Garland,” Joel Grey, and Larry Storch, “the lovable Corporal Agarn from F-Troop.”  (This was in 2002.)

One cummerbund-popping emcee told us he had opened for the Righteous Brothers, and had done Las Vegas, the cruise ships, and been married nine times. He said, “Only Mickey Rooney has me beat.” His latest wife wouldn’t let him travel, so he sold Cadillacs during the day and emceed Century Village shows at night.  He told us two “inside” Century Village jokes:

What’s 25-feet long and smells like urine?

The conga line at Century Village.

What’s an 80-year-old man smell like?

Depends.

The band wasn’t allowed to mingle with the audience after performances. That was a rule.  Another Century Village rule was do not walk off stage for an encore because the audience will leave and you won’t get an encore. Also, don’t take an intermission because the lines at the restroom will be so long the intermission will never end. Also, do not sell CDs.  Why not?

We broke some rules.

We never got asked back — and the crowd liked our comedy stuff!  I think they did.  I remember talking to a New York couple after the gig (violation of rule #1).  They liked us.

I would like to return to Florida, but it won’t happen unless I buy a condo at Century Village.

share

My mother, Julia, never saved anything. When she moved to assisted living, the only thing she kept was her dining room set and some clay pots my dad had made.

My dad was an amateur potter in his retirement. He didn’t use a wheel; he pinched the clay with his thumbs.  His work wasn’t too good; I threw most of his stuff in the garbage. My mother watched and said, “How could you!”

“Mom,” I said, “I’m saving some of  it– some representative pieces!”

Address Your Mess.

Address Your Mess is a woman in Cleveland who, for a fee, de-clutters your house. My mother didn’t need her.

Maybe I need AYM.  I have report cards from elementary school in my attic.  My mother said I could be president someday, so I’m holding on to the report cards.

Is my mess more important than your mess?

I gave the Address Your Mess phone number to a high school friend whose parents moved out of their bungalow after 50-plus years. They had stuff.

I read about an elderly woman in southeast Ohio who had 36 boxes of cereal, GAR medals and a wooden fife from the battle of Chickamauga.

I have UN stamps too, besides the report cards.

—

Here’s a vid, “Square Mile,” about real estate and board games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYnabJr7esc

—

Yiddishe Cup is at Fairmount Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, tonight (Wed.) and Park Synagogue, Cleveland Hts., tomorrow night. 

share

I’m a German klezmer musician. Hold your questions. Here are the answers:

I live in Berlin. My aunt once told me — she was drunk — “Why do you play that crap? You’re German!”

I play every year Kristallnacht commemorations, where there is always at least one Jew who comes up to me and says, “Are you Jewish?”  I say no, and he’s says, “You have to be!”  Sometimes I tell the person my grandfather was Romanian,  just to move on.

I also play jazz and funk (Vulfpeck).  I have played even for Orthodox Jews in the States, but they don’t thrill too much to my jazz music.

I play reeds — saxophone and clarinet.  I don’t try to be Jewish.  I never wanted to be Jewish or not Jewish. Somebody said, “You’re not really a Jew unless at one point in your life you didn’t want to be a Jew.”   I don’t know about such things.

In the Middle West, in Ohio, an old Jew called me a “poseur.”  I had to look that  up.  He was a klezmer musician.  Maybe he was a poseur.  The middle of the United States is very red, I think.  Only he could play klezmer, I think he means. If people think I’m a bad person for playing music from somewhere else, then they know damn little about music.

I’m a klezmer musician.  Forget about the German part for a second.

————–

Check out Magdalena Waligorska‘s nonfiction book Klezmer’s Afterlife, about the klezmer scene in Berlin and Cracow. Forty-three percent of this post is lifted from the book.

File this under KlezFiction and Fake Profiles.

share

I like to proclaim “golden ages” as they happen. My record is 2-1.

Win: The klez revival. In 1998 I told my band: “This is the golden age of Yiddishe Cup. We’re getting gigs in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” We flew to the U.P. via Minneapolis, then on to Calumet, Michigan, a mining town with an opera house.  Every town in America hired a klezmer band in the 1990s for its multicultural performing arts series.

Lose: I didn’t see the real estate crash of 2008-09.  A couple young guys wanted to buy my Riverview building in Lakewood, Ohio, in 2004, and I asked too much.  I wish they had bought it. I should have come down in price.

Win.  The peak of Cleveland Jewry was 2000. The Jewish Federation would bring in entertainers like David “Dudu” Fisher and Mike Burstyn for galas. Burstyn and Fisher both charged at least $15,000.  I took my mother to see Burstyn.  She was in a wheelchair with Parkinson’s.  I wheeled her to the front of the room, where the machers were. Some of the “healthy old” looked kind of scared of my mom.  The Jewish Federation employees wore earpieces like FBI agents and worked crowd control; others Federation workers ran the wide-screen video and cued up speeches; and other workers told guests where to line up for dessert — the most important event. Fisher and Burstyn haven’t been back since.

We’re in the golden age of the Klezmer Guy blog now.  What other golden ages?  I don’t know.  You tell me. The golden age of golden-agers?  I’m playing a lot of nursing homes lately, specializing in 80th, 90th and 100th birthday parties, and the residents and nursing homes are looking very spiffy.  I hope those facilities — and the residents — look that good when I’m there.

share

It is odd to busk — play the streets — when you’re middle aged. (Or  old.)  I played Rome last month. I played the Jewish quarter — the ghetto.  My musician son, Jack, skedaddled.  He would have nothing to do with me.  I didn’t know any Italian Jewish music, but who does?   I played “Erev Shel Shoshanim,” some klezmer and standards like “All of Me” and “That’s Amore.”

My most appreciative fans were a group of college-age boys. They plied me with coins.

Afterward I said to them, “Here’s your money back. You were my best fans.”

Lucy (Stratton) Kaegi with gelato.  “Larry David” with clarinet, background.  August 2014

They insisted I keep the money. One kid said, “Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? It’s our favorite show.” Another kid said I looked like Larry David.

“I’ve seen Curb,” I said.

“What about Seinfeld?”

“Also, good.”

“You guys Jewish?” I said.  I wasn’t sure; their English accents threw me off.

They said yes.

“Where you guys from?”

“Australia.”

“I’ve never been to Australia,” I said.

“Come to Sydney. It’s beautiful!”

“I’d like to.”  If I can clear at least $10 on the streets, I’m there.

—
Footnote:the photo is not from the Jewish quarter.  But it’s Rome.  I roamed.

—

Here’s a second busking story, from the archives: “Busking in Israel and Elsewhere,” Times of Israel,  7/12/12.

—

A new essay from City Journal: “Bubbles, Booms, and Cash Flow.”  Not about busking.

share

You’re interested in klezmer music, but tell me honestly, do I exhaust you with too much klezmer reporting?

I’m the only klezmer journalist in the world, so yes I’m prolific. No wait, there are a couple more writers . . . Rogovoy in Massachusetts, Kun of California, Robinson in New York, Davidow in Boston.  And some academics too.

We meet up virtually, and collaboratively, right here. At least I think we do.

My life is filled with klezmer.  Do other people have klezmer dreams? Do people have bluegrass dreams? Why would they?  What about Chagall — didn’t he have klezmer dreams?

Existence is a wall to climb over.

I’m over it.

I have no big statement on klezmer. I started playing it because I didn’t know what else to do.  Buddy Holly, I like him; B.B. King, excellent. I couldn’t be those guys. I tried.

In college I wrote about jazz.  There is jazz writing. There are jazz journals. What about klezmer journals?  I started one: Klezmer Guy. It’s online. Check it out.

I like quirky music with glitches — in short the wrong note in the right place.  I like the staccato of Yiddish and the clarinet.  My speech is a cluster of blobs and blurts. Some of it makes sense.

share

Fatima had a B.A. and a steady job, and was single — for about three days, until her boyfriend moved in with her. The boyfriend wouldn’t fill out a rental application. He drifted around the basement electric meters with a screwdriver.

The building manager told him to stay out of the meter area.

He said, “How do you know I’m not a registered electrician?”

The building manager said, “Because I didn’t call one.”

I got a call from an anonymous man: “Watch out. Fatima is no good. She owes me $40, and her boyfriend carries a gun.”

I told Fatima I’d give her all her money back if she left within two days. If she didn’t move out, I would evict her for “unauthorized roommate.”

I gave her $900 back, and she moved. Add another $100 to that — my extra cost  because I owed a tenant in the building $100 for recommending Fatima. I couldn’t not pay the guy for his referral; I had approved Fatima, and then she had screwed up, bringing in her boyfriend with the screwdriver. 

There were several screwups.

—
“Fatima” is a pseudonym.
—
Check out Jack Stratton’s latest Kickstarter. He’s hoping to raise $25.  Click here for info.  And watch this slightly incoherent vid:

share

I saw Wilma Salisbury, the former Cleveland Plain Dealer dance and music critic, at a concert. She used to be feared  — used to be.  When she stopped writing for the Plain Dealer, she became just Wilma Salisbury.

I saw Eleanor Mallet. She was a columnist a couple decades ago. Now she’s simply Eleanor Mallet.

Winsor French — the late Cleveland Press columnist — arrived at work in a Rolls. This was in the 1930s. He was independently wealthy. He went all over the world during the Depression, reporting on glamorous parties, for working stiffs in Cleveland. He also wrote a lot about Cleveland nightlife.

Have you read any book-length compilations by newspaper columnists? I read one good one: Eric Broder’s funny The Great Indoors. What if you read 45 Dick Feagler columns in a row? Would you die?  (Dick Feagler is an excellent writer but 45 columns in a row about the good old days, that’s rough.)

Here are a few other former Cleveland columnists: Don Robertson, Alfred Lubrano, Jim Parker, Jim Neff, Mary Strassmyer, Tom Green . . . I’m just getting started. (No Googling either.)

I was a columnist once.  I wrote about candy, sheepshead and the library for Sun Newspapers.  I picked easy, uncontroversial subjects.  I was too ambivalent.

Sun Press 7/29/82

Terry Pluto, a Plain Dealer sportswriter, moonlights as a religion columnist. I sometimes clip his columns for inspiration. Pluto phones clergy and asks (my guess), “Can you tell us how to live — and preferably in three or fewer sentences.”

It’s tough to crank out columns weekly.  Pluto quoted a rabbi who cited Pirke Avot (a section of Talmud): “The one who is wealthy is satisfied with what he has.”

Do I covet Pluto’s job?

Nope.

—

I had an essay in Belt Mag last week about delis. (Boni: Some interesting comments at the end of the article.)  Click on “Deli Men”

—

Clevelanders, Yiddishe Cup plays tomorrow (Thurs. Aug. 7) at 7 p.m. at John Carroll University.  We’re on the lawn in front of the Grasselli Library.  Park at the college lot across from Pizzazz restaurant and walk toward the campus.  Bring a chair or blanket.

The concert is free.  If raining, the show is indoors at the Dolan Science Center.

share

The mayor’s assistant told us not to play any klezmer music — “nothing ethnic,” she said.  Just American.

No klezmer?  Why did the mayor hire Yiddishe Cup for the city’s summer concert series?

Our contract rider stipulated a fruit platter, bottled water and diet colas. A good gig, food-wise. But what were we going to play?

I said, “You don’t want to alienate anybody with ethnic music?”

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s the mayor’s thought.”

“How much non-ethnic music do you want?”

“All or mostly.”

“Can you give me a percentage?”

“Ninety percent American music,” she said.

Yiddishe Cup played “Dock of the Bay,” some Motown, Beatles, “Hang on Sloopy” and “Old Time Rock And Roll.” A Chinese woman liked “My Girl” so much we played it twice.

I told the crowd Yiddishe Cup started out as a deli on Kinsman Road, then moved to Cedar Center, and ultimately wound up on the far East Side. I  kept up that quirky patter throughout because “My Girl,” the second time through, wasn’t doing it for me.  A city councilman asked where Yiddishe Cup had been at Cedar Center. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I should have said, “Between Abbey’s and Solomon’s.”  Or maybe “We were in back of Harvey’s Backroom.”

We snuck in “Miserlou” — a Greek tune.  We did a Macedonian tune.  We did an Israeli tune (!)  And for some reason, “Hawaii Five-0.”

—

SIDE B

1 IN 25

When I went to the solidarity-with-Israel rally in Cleveland last week, I figured I would know 1-in-10 people. I knew 1-in-30, at most.

There were 2,800 people. That was a letdown — not the 2,800, but I didn’t know more of them. I knew many of the cantors, rabbis and Federation speakers but I didn’t know many of the rank-and-file yehudim.

I knew one person in this photo.
  (Cleveland, 7/22/14)

Shouldn’t I — after 25 years with Yiddishe Cup — be more plugged in than 1-in-30?

There were Christian groups from far off places (Aurora, Westlake), so maybe I’m more like 1-in-25 (with lantsmen).

Give me 1-in-25.

—
Yiddishe Cup plays 7 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 7, at John Carroll University as part of the City of University Heights (Ohio) Summer Concert Series.

Alice Stratton and Daniel Ducoff at the 2012 Univ. Hts. summer concert. (Photo by Jim Olexa)

The concert is on the lawn in front of the Grasselli Library on the quad. Park in the college lot across from Pizzazz restaurant and bring a blanket or chair. If raining, the concert is in the Dolan Science Center. Free. (We always deliver a top-notch kosher-for-Pesach klezmer  show for University Heights.)

Guest vocalist Shawn Fink will sing “Joe and Paul’s,” a 1940s comedy classic, and the band will do its original “Warrensville and Cedar Road,” about TJ Maxx, Bob Evans and Target.

share

I lived in a Cleveland Heights duplex  — a side-by-side.  Joe, the landlord, lived in the other half.  He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, smoked cigars and nagged his wife.

A note taped to the thermostat — on my side of the house — read: “Whoever is turning the thermostat up and not turning it down, is throwing money out the window!”  I lived with a social worker, a Case Western Reserve nursing student from a strawberry farm in Lake County, and a telemarketer. I met these guys off a bulletin board at Case.

I practiced guitar in the basement, trying to be Bob Dylan.

When the social worker moved out, a woman came by to look for a room to rent.  I met her at the house’s front door and said, “We’re looking for somebody clean, quiet, and . . .”

“Cute?” she said. She was wearing taped glasses. Nevertheless, she was not bad looking.

The strawberry farmer said to me, “You think she’s Jewish?”  (He was always looking out for me.)

“She’s a nurse from West 45^th Street,” I said.  “Not likely.”

The woman rented the room. Then the landlord’s wife, Gertie, kicked her out.  Gertie said, “Girls spell trouble. I’d rather deal with men.  You should take that as a compliment, fellas.  Why would a girl who makes a good living want to live here anyway?”

Joe, the landlord, chimed in, “We have to be indiscreet about this.  What if you all start bringing in girls?  It’ll look like a whorehouse.  You’ve always been gentlemen till now.”

I went down the basement to practice.  I was making $9/hour teaching blues harmonica at the adult-ed program. Not bad for 1977.

The nurse moved out, to her own place, a nearby double, and I called her and we went out. We hit it off.  I told my parents, “She’s from West 45^th Street.”

My father said, “Are her parents devout Catholics?”

“She’s Jewish.”  (She was. I wasn’t pulling my dad’s leg, for a change.)

My mother said, “I’m getting a new dress now.  Get married. You can get divorced later. You promised you’d get married when you’re 27 and you’re 27.  A Jewish girl in nursing?”

“Because she wants to marry a doctor,” my father said. “Anything wrong with her?  She’s a 26-year-old unmarried Jewish girl.”

“Girls are more independent nowadays,” my mother said.

The girl and I got married the next year. 

The girl, Alice Shustick, 1977

—
Footnote: Alice lived on West 45th Street because it was somewhat near Tri-C West nursing school, and the rent was cheap.

share

Tacky tourist attractions are popping up near the stellar Challah Fame. The latest shtick dreck is the Yiddishe Cup Experience, in the old Beef Corral at Cedar Center, South Euclid, Ohio.

Sombuddy pleaz open ah vindah!

Don’t go.  Repeat, don’t go. Here’s what you’ll “miss”:

1. The first Jewish traffic light (a semaphore actually), from Kinsman Road, 1925. The semaphore has matzo, knish, and seltzer symbols instead of red, yellow and green.  The semaphore was taken down in 1926 because the Italians couldn’t tell matzo from knishes.

2. Theodore Bikel and Mickey Katz hand puppets. Who made these?  [Josh Dolgin of Canada.]

3. The “Jewish Underground Railroad Experience.”  A sandbox. Supposed to be the Sinai.

5. A “Chagall” mural by Anonymous, scraped off the wall from Mira’s Cafe, Mandel JCC, Beachwood, Ohio.

6. A video clip from Harley Son of David, a movie about Jewish motorcyclists.  Music by Yiddishe Cup.

7. Klezmer-themed postage stamps from Lichtenstein and Malaysia. Musicians on the stamps include Marcel Salomon, Adrianne Greenbaum and Moshe Berlin.

8. A matchbook from Solomon’s restaurant, Cedar Center, 1966.

9. Itchy the Squirrel, an animatron who sings “Oyfn Pripetchik.”  (Poor fidelity, but surprisingly good Yiddish.)

10. Shtetl Avenue — a recreation of 1920s East 105th Street, complete with midwives, klezmer bands, appetizing shops and candy stores.   Staffed by teen volunteers from Agnon School.

The place is horrible. Don’t go.  Go to The Challah Fame.

(Yiddishe Cup, the band, is not affiliated with the Yiddishe Cup Experience.  Again: Yiddishe Cup, the band, is not affiliated with the Yiddishe Cup Experience)

share

I’m not good around movies. I frequently go negative right afterward. I can’t stand being in a dark room for two hours watching mostly junk. What percentage of movies are good? Not that many. I get dragged along to movies because I’m a social animal.

I went to Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. I had read an interview with the “legend” in the Forward; I liked the word “Supermensch” in the title; and a friend said the movie was good.  Lastly, and most importantly, my wife wanted to go.

Shep Gordon is a booking agent/manager, who managed Alice Cooper, among others. Shep did a lot of drugs and messed around with a lot of women. He was loyal to his clients — for sure the ones interviewed in the movie. Gordon comes off as a very loyal sybarite.  In Hollywood that apparently qualifies as a “supermensch.”

Why not more about Shep’s mother, who liked the family dog more than Shep? What about Shep’s brother? He isn’t in the movie. Shep had a few marriages; I lost count.  Gordon hung out with just famous people. (Not entirely true; there were three or four non-famous people in the movie.)  He liked round tables, as compared to square tables, for his dinner parties. Round tables are more conducive to  good conversation. That was interesting.

I walked out when Gordon had a heart attack.  Maybe it wasn’t a heart attack. He was in a hospital bed with tubes in him.  I didn’t hang around for the diagnosis. Heartless.  Me or him?

In the Cedar-Lee Theatre lobby afterward, I was called a curmudgeon and cynic.  I went on Rotten Tomatoes the next day: one-in-four reviews said the movie was crap. So I was redeemed.  Right?  One in four.  I was redeemed.

I wonder what Searching for Sugar Man got on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn’t like that movie either. [Ouch. Almost all positive reviews.]  I thought Sugar Man was too much about the music business and not enough about the guy . . . “We were big in South Africa but not Detroit” stuff. I had a friend who was fairly big in Japan in the 1960s, but not in America. So was Joan Jett. I remember this stuff but don’t want to.

I need a 98-percent-or-better on Rotten Tomatoes to go to the movies. Ninety-eight is my sweet spot.  Sugar Man was 95; Supermensch, 75.

I’m going to check out Anvil! The Story of Anvil on Rotten Tomatoes . . .

98.  Yes.  Anvil! was inspirational; a bunch of Canadian guys with lousy day jobs got their old band back together and toured.  Check it out. And don’t kvetch to me if you don’t like it.

—

Ann Wightman, salutatorian,
Brush High ’68

I wrote this one for Cleveland.com last week: Class Reunions Shouldn’t Have to Be Every 10 Years.

share

My neighbor got rid of a lot of her books because she’s moving. Twenty-five years of books.  Many of them dirty.  I took these:

Cobbler, Mend my Shoe!
by Thom McAn

Stupid Bastard: The Life of Harry Purim
by Meier Meier

Amusing Car Sales
by Del Spitzer

Good Riddance, Chancres
by Rodney Benson MD

Fungo Batting
by Woody Held

Tie Your Own Tubes
by V.A. Szechtomijh

My Selfies
by Elaine “The Body” Sugarman

Put It Right There
by Vera Panting

The Cry of the Serbo-Croats
by Boris Crzwcwzw

10 Days to a Hairless Body
by Alice Greune

The Wiener in Bavarian Folk Arts
by Nathan Famoso

So You Want to Be Jewish?
by Saul Bernard Roth

The Story of the Harlem Cooperative Bakery
by Rose Towne Krug

100 Years in an RV
by Gabe Marquez

The Cheater
by Bernie Madoff

Algebraical Puzzles, Nuts, Wrinkles and Twisters
by Albert Einstein

Sexism at the Battle of Waterloo
by “Jilly”

Chillicothe: Ohio’s First Capital
by Les Peterson

Jesus in My Glove
by Mac “Octopus” Vouty

Cuckoos and Grosbeaks
by Nancy Debeak

Golf Your Way to Sexual Fulfillment
by Franz Godemiche

How to Identify a Child Molester
by Frederick McFeely Rogers

Blood and Bills: My Life as a Successful Surgeon
by Kirk Benway MD

I Broke My Knee and Ran 10 Miles
by Mark Schilling

What It Means to Be a Coprophile
by “Raymond”

The History of the Electric Toothbrush
by Ralph Solonitz DDS

The Streets of San Francisco (and Richmond, California)
by Cindy L. Barbour

Covering Your Lawn with Sheet Metal
by Leo Kaufman

Throw Away Your Truss
by Charles Atlas

Jackoff in the Old Red Barn
by Ricky Dickey

An Appreciation of Aluminum Siding
by Kenneth Goldberg

Regular Guy: The Life of Nelson Rockefeller
by Barry Grovel

So You Want to Dance, Act, and Play the Clarinet!
by Priscilla Peck

Lieder and its Influence on Mick Jagger
by Aaron Alwitz

The Birdwatcher
by J. Philip Stratton

My .38 Special is So Special
by Stan Urankar

Masturbate Those Pounds Away!
by Weary Reilly

The Hipster Jogger Handbook
by Meghan Corriendo

Lesbianism in Western Ireland (1886 – 1891)
by Olive D’Olyly and Winnie Carr

Speling Maid Ez
by Kent Read

A Priest Looks at Group Sex
by Pedro Nanismo

Kreplach in the Congo
by Reb Yellen

All My Laundromats
by Johnny Park

Pet Insurance for Dummies
by Fido Buster

More Selfies
by Elaine “The Body” Sugarman

Bowl Game Jitters
by Glenn E. “Bo” Schembechler Jr.

Sitz-Bathing Around the World
by Lee Huang

How to Get into Princeton
by Muncy Rowfant and Michael Yu

Fracking Jews
by T. Boone Soltzberg

Guess Your Neighbor’s Net Worth
by Alton Whitehouse IV

Thank you and Goodbye, and Hello
by Hillary Clinton

Peeing is the New Smoking
by Amy Streem

Social Media for Seniors
by Betty Dumchick

Life on the Outskirts of Beer
by Isaac Miller

—

A major hat tip to Gilbert Sorrentino. Forty-nine percent of the above book titles are from Sorrentino’s novel Mulligan Stew (1979).

The German wiener photo is by Eric Broder

File this under Fake Profiles.

share

My son Teddy had a birthday party at Putt-Putt on Northfield Road. This was in 1990.  I think that’s the last time I played Putt-Putt — official Putt-Putt. There are only 49 Putt-Putt courses left in the United States.

There was a Chinese miniature golf course on Libby Road at Broadway Avenue in Cleveland. (I think that’s where it was.)  It had a Buddha that went up and down.   My high school friends and I couldn’t get enough of that course.

Arnold Palmer Miniature Golf  . . .  Just had to say that.

I would like to live long enough to play Putt-Putt with my grandchildren.  (First, I need the grandchildren.)  I want to stay healthy enough to bend down and pick up the ball.  That’s the hardest part of mini golf.

Adventure golf, such as Pirate’s Cove, sounds good.

Putt Putz

—

There’s a  vid version of this post — slightly more in-depth.  (Originally posted in 2011).

—

Come to Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, 7 p.m. Sun. (June 29) for a free klezmer concert by the Josh “Socalled” Dolgin Sextet, featuring super clarinetist Michael Winograd.  (Jack Stratton on drums.)

Josh Dolgin

—
Here’s a new vid, Don Bryon Salutes Mickey Katz.

share

The letter is from Milt — a friend of my parents — to his kids. 

May 15, 1990

Dear Children,

In 15 days I’ll be 71.

As you know, I’m not religious, but I do like a good party.

About my funeral: Use the gentile funeral home, Fioritto in Lyndhurst, to deliver my body to the Workmen’s Circle Cemetery.  Just bury me.  Invite some family and friends.  No rabbi!  I’ve never gone to synagogue, so don’t start with that now.

Pick a convenient Sunday afternoon to throw a memorial service at the Workmen’s Circle hall on Green Road.  There is plenty room, a loudspeaker, and a kitchen. Anybody who wants to speak, can speak. Except Bernstein.

I want a nice sendoff: trays, Scotch, music, dancing, food, coffee, pastry, wine and cold beer.  Whiskey too.  Hire a klezmer band — Bert Stratton’s band.  (Bert is Julia and Toby’s son.)  But remember, one hour of klezmer is enough.

Get the trays at Bernie Shulman’s at Cedar Center.  They’re good and cheap, but you have to pick up the goods yourself.  Get pastries from Acme supermarket at Mayfield near Green.  Their pastries are excellent and much cheaper than the Jewish bakeries.

I want coffee, lots of coffee; the Workmen’s Circle can make it by the gallon.  And plenty of soft drinks and wine — good wine. No Champagne.  And hire kitchen help.

Mom will say I’m nuts.  She can stay home if she wants!  This is what I want.

Love,

Dad

—

Footnote: Milt died 16 years after he wrote the letter.  He ate a lot and never exercised and lived to 87.  He had a graveside service with no band and no food.  No hard feelings, Milt.  All mourners received a copy of Milt’s brisket recipe at the funeral.

“Milt” is a pseudonym.  If Milt’s children want his real name here, they’ll let me know.

share

Ask me about my bike trip

On the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), I’m around far fewer Jews than I’m used to. I’m most comfortable with a 20 percent-or-more Jewish crowd in life. If the Jewish count is less than that, I get a bit uneasy, mostly because less people understand my sense of humor.

My high school was about 25 percent Jewish; my college was about 20 percent Jewish; my social scene in Cleveland is 58.7 percent Jewish; and my place of worship is 100 percent.

On GOBA, there are at most 20 Jews out of 2,500 riders.  It’s like a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

Oddly, one year (2009) I pedaled GOBA with an Orthodox woman. She brought more tuna fish than Nixon took to China. She wore a skirt. There was an Amish woman with a skirt too. The Frisco Kid: Gene Wilder and the Amish thing. Maybe both women will be at GOBA this year.

In 2010 I met a Jewish doctor from Dayton, Ohio; a Jewish guitar player from University Heights; and my buddy — and fellow cyclist — Irwin Weinberger (Yidddishe Cup’s singer) played “Ose Shalom” on Friday night.  This was after a fried fish shabbes dinner at the Fraternal Order of Eagles hall in McArthur, Ohio. We made kiddush over Miller Lite, which technically isn’t brucha (blessing) material. (Tain’t a grape.)

GOBA kicks off in Mansfield, Ohio, this Sunday.

—

Gear shift . . .

Is there a market for a Jewish-tinged “Chosen to Ride” bike tour of the Midwest?

Day 1

We meet at Chicago Midway airport and bike to Pepe’s, a Mexican restaurant on Cicero Avenue. Traffic is crazy but fun in Chicago. Bring a helmet and a sword.

Lodging at the Beloit, Wisconsin, Holiday Inn.

Day 2

Lunch stop at the Park View Motel, Richland Center, Wisconsin, next to AgriDairy. See the Frank Lloyd Wright silo.

Dinner at the Ground Round, Dubuque, Iowa.

Day 3

Pitch tents on the lawn of the Omaha JCC and check out the exhibit in the hallway about The Bagel, the name for the old Jewish ‘hood in Omaha.

Chosen to Ride

Day 4

Dinner in Nevada, Missouri.  We’ll eat in the cafeteria at Cottey College, an all-women’s school.

Days 5 and 6

Shabbes in St. Louis. We spend time off the bikes and at riverboat casinos, where we suck cig smoke and lose a few fun bucks. Each night we’re at Ted Drewes custard stand.

Day 7

Dinner at Wabash College, an all-men’s college in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Equal rights for men.

Day 8

At the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, we attend a concert by Gabe Kaplan and Yiddishe Cup. Kaplan doesn’t look like Gabe Kaplan anymore. He’s a million years old. (As is Yiddishe Cup.)  Kaplan’s best joke is “A widower in Miami Beach asks his date, an elderly woman, if she likes sex, and she says, ‘Infrequently.’ The widower says, ‘Is that one word or two?’”

Day 9

Our farewell banquet is at Ken’s Diner in Skokie, Illinois, a glatt kosher hamburger joint. Music by the clarinet/harp duo of Kurt and Annette Bjorling.

Think about it.

—-

Yiddishe Cup is in Parade the Circle noon Saturday (June 14), Wade Oval, Cleveland.

share

I audiotaped a family dinner in April 1973.  I told my dad I was doing “cinema verite.”  (Don’t knock it. Louis Armstrong did a lot of audiotaping.)

In 2010 I played the audiotape for my adult children. They thought I sounded like my then college-age son Jack.  My parents had asked me questions about my college roommates.

My mother said What’s So-and-So from your dorm doing?

Doing what?  I stonewalled my mom, like a good college kid.

My son Ted, listening to the tape in 2010, said, “You’re weird, recording everything.”

Weird?  No.  Wired?  Yes.  You can never have too much documentation. (“This is the age of investigation and every citizen must investigate” — Ed Sanders.) For instance, I wish my mother had saved my dad’s letters from Fort Benning, 1941.  My mother threw nearly everything out.  When she moved to assisted living, I cleaned out her apartment in about two hours.  Two hours, not days.

My audiotape is boring.  “I don’t want any dessert” — that kind of thing. I hope somebody throws it out.  Maybe I will.  For one thing, there’s a horrible sax solo after the dinner recording, and I sound like a jerk — on sax and at dinner:

Dad:  “What the hell you got it [tape recorder] on for?  There’s nothing going on.”

Mom: “He likes to do it.”

Bert:  “I don’t listen to them anyway, so what do I care.”

—-

I had an essay in Belt Magazine last week.  Belt is online dispatches from the Rust Belt.  “On Lee Road.”

share

A New York editor wrote, “You should write a book.  After reading your wonderful essay in the New York Times this morning, I’ve spent the last couple of hours reading everything you’ve written that I could find online. You root your essays in your personal experience, but they have a universal appeal.”

The editor concluded, “A humorous book about real estate would have tremendous commercial appeal.”

Yes!  But what if I worked a year on the book, got a paltry advance, and only four people read the book?  Besides, I’ve already published a book. I published a novel in the 1970s about sex and college.  It was small press (my press). I gave a copy to Allen Ginsberg. You can find it on Google.  A Cold Night in Ann Arbor.

I’m fried from writing books that go nowhere.  I wrote unpublished books before that New York editor was born.  I wrote Check My Balance (about my mental health and the family business), and Riding on Mayfield (about my youth) and Kicked in the Groin (about my hernia operation).  None of them got published, and I had great agents too.

One time — when  I was in Latin America — my dad acted as my literary secretary.  He wrote to my literary agent, “We’re very proud of Bert and are very pleased you are representing him.”

I’m glad my dad was “very proud” of me.  I still think about that.

But I’m done.  I just wrote the New York editor back: “I’m not going to write the real estate book.”  If anybody wants to read about real estate, they can always click here for 92 Klezmer Guy posts about real estate.
—

The above is Philip Roth–style fiction.  Yes, my dad was my “literary secretary,” and the bit about the unpublished novels is based on fact, but I never received any email from a New York editor.  If I had, I would have written back, “Yes, I’ll do it.  Can I pay you?”

File this under fake profiles.
—

SIDE B

WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG

Every year I pause to thank the major commenters to this blog. I could do Klezmer Guy without comments, but it wouldn’t be as interesting.

In no particular order, thanks to kibitzers Marc, Ken G, Jessica Schreiber, Gerald Ross, Ted, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling, Ellen, Seth . . .

David Korn, Dave R, Irwin Weinberger, Alice, Don Friedman, Lea Grossman Hapner, Ari Davidow, Pierce G, Charlie B, Jeff Moss, Nancy Kane, Jack, Gerry Kanter, Michael Wex, Faruk Ahmed and Steven Greenman.

See your name here next year by writing in.

An extra gracias to
Ken G and Mark Schilling. They crank out comments in bulk — always insightful, inciting and/or stupid.

Lastly, thanks to bloggie illustrator Ralph Solonitz, the best and cleverest drawer around. Here’s an old post about Ralph and his motorcycle.

share

During the last days of the shah of Iran, I taught Iranian teenagers at a fly-by-night ESL school in Cleveland.

I punched a kid from Hamadan.  The school director called me into his office and said, “What’s with the discipline problem all of a sudden? These kids are under 18.  We’re liable.”

I apologized to the principal and promised I wouldn’t punch anybody . . . else that day.

Javad –- another Iranian — flicked a pen into the air during class and said, “Excuse me, is this toss?” I was in the middle of teaching the song “Tom Dooley.”

Solheil –- Iranian #3 — said:   “Dooley means dick in Farsi.”

I punched Soheil.

Javad interrupted, “Anus is asshole?”

I didn’t touch Javad.  I just punched Solheil!

The principal wasn’t happy with me.  My students were smaller than me, and the principal was very solicitous of them; he washed the kids’ clothes in Woolite and presented each new student with a can of Right Guard.  He also took the kids bowling, to the art museum, and threw parties. He took the boys to the dentist, the visa office, the optometrist, and the jeans store.

The principal was also the school owner, and he was burning out.  He said to me, “I don’t know what stinks more — an Iranian or nine cats. These sons of millionaires have two undershirts and two underpants, and I still don’t know color they are.”

The ESL school didn’t last.  I wonder where the principal is. [Google: Washington state.]  I bet the Iranians are in California.  I never see Iranians here. But if I ever do see an Iranian, I’ll punch him just for old time’s sake (assuming he is under 5-5 and 110 pounds.)

I-ran a school

—

I have an essay up at City Journal,  “Tales From Landlordia.”

share