Stevieslaw: Teddy Loses His Job

Posted on September 26, 2013 by stevieslaw

Teddy Loses His Job
My mother always tapped her forefinger on the side of her head when she talked about Cousin Ted. “There is something loose up there,” she’d say. “You can hear it rattle when he walks.”
Teddy is a smart guy but does seem a little off. He was fired yesterday. I met him this morning at the coffee shop to listen to his side of the story and to try to encourage him.
The long and short of it is that Teddy did a twenty minute verbal assault on a company product at a rollout meeting yesterday. “I really got into it,” he said. “I remember telling the managers who pushed the product that their actions were something the Nazis would be proud of, that the product had already cost the company jobs, and that the result of the product on the public would be worse than Thalidomide.”
“Teddy,” I said gently. “I thought your company made plastic pipe.”
“I read somewhere,” continued Ted, “That being in the public eye—in the middle of things—was much more important to advancing your career than what you say or do.” “But they fired me.” “They seemed particularly upset that I didn’t seem to understand that the product had not been released yet—and, that while I held the floor for twenty minutes, I never once suggested anyway in which the product could be improved.”
Ted, who lives in Texas, has decided to run for public office. I think it might work for him.

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Stevieslaw Exclusive: House Republicans to Push for Infrastructure Repair.

Posted on September 18, 2013 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw Exclusive: House Republicans to Push for Infrastructure Repair.
Smokey Diamond, our intrepid reporter, has just returned from an exclusive interview with Lonny Tunes, spokesperson for the tea party Republicans in the House. She reports that they have convinced John Boehner, Eric Cantor and others in the Republican leadership that a bill authorizing infrastructure repair must be passed by the House and Senate before the 2014 elections.
“We have gone from a nation with an enviable road and bridge system to one in which you take your life—or at least your dental work—in your hands when you drive to the country club, said Lonny. We have given the Republican approach the catchy title of “the one percent solution”. In it, we propose to repair, refurbish and rebuild our roads and bridges and limit their future use to those whose incomes place them in the top 1%. Think of the savings. Others can walk, or bike, or use the existing infrastructure,” he added. “Clearly, some new roads and bridges will need to be constructed. Why there is no direct link between Wall Street and The Hamptons, for example, is mind boggling.”
Payn Nought, a tea party mainstay, added “We have tried building and maintaining our infrastructure for the common man and it just does not work. Consider the interstate highway system. In a mere 50 or 60 years, they’ve worn it out! If we were to rebuild the system, they would just wear it out again.
The new highways for the wealthy are to be equipped with driverless cars and rest plazas with four star restaurants and full service gas stations. To those few left out—like Linda Person, a single mother of three who works three low paying service jobs to keep it together, Payn symbolically rolled up the sleeves of his very, very expensive shirt, smiled and said, “Try harder.”

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My Voices of Central PA Piece for September

Posted on September 10, 2013 by stevieslaw

If Arnold Can…The Less-intelligent-than-average-American Guide to Becoming a Best-selling Author.
It was a long shot, but I couldn’t resist going to the Barnes and Noble Store at the Prudential Center in Boston last Wednesday night. Arnold Schlansky was to read from his best-selling memoir, “Growing Up Hard—An Adolescence in Brooklyn.” I had grown up with an Arnold S. in Brooklyn and, although I doubted it could possibly be the same fellow, I had to go and see. As soon as I came through the door, I recognized the tall, lanky, graying man hovering near the podium as the Arnold I once knew. As it turns out, I was wrong and the guy got a little put out when I tried Arnold’s old nickname on him (sorry, I can’t print it). The Arnold I had known was reading all right, but he had somehow turned into a short fat balding guy with a mock Boston accent. I can’t say we spoke, as I stayed in the back of the room, having recalled that I owed him $50 from a poker game in 1966. But I did get enough of his talk to know that his memoir was nothing but lies, lies and more lies. It is simply not true, for example, that we hung Arnold by his heels, from the rim on the basketball court at the local playground on one very cold night in February. Anyone who grew up in Brooklyn would know immediately that you would never do that. The odds of bending the rim were too great and if you did, the odds of it being fixed in your lifetime were very, very slim. For the life of me I can’t remember what we did hang him from.
But the take-home message here is not the memoir. It is the fact that Arnold Schlansky was able to write, publish and market a best-selling book. This is the same Arnold that did four years of remedial English in high school. Take a moment to consider that. Four years of remedial English in a high school in Brooklyn—wow. With that in mind, we at Stevieslaw are pleased to publish: “If Arnold can…The LAGuide to becoming a best-selling author. In the completely interactive LAG, we will:
1. Provide you with a personality and persistence test to determine if you should best-sell as a novelist, poet, essayist, or creative non-fictionist. Perhaps, you were meant to write best-selling copy for Febreze ads on network TV? We will point you in the “write” direction (Get it? Get it?).
2. Convince you that whatever your forte, you will need an agent to help place your work. Here, we introduce you to the important concept of “prefamousing” as a way to find an agent. An ordinary person who has already written 240 pages of the great American Novel might never find an agent. But the infamous, even those without a single thought in their heads, will have agents beating down the doors of the local lock-ups to offer them contracts. With your input, we will help you find the heinous, infamous, or famously stupid thing you should do to become “prefamous.”
3. Teach you how to form a writing group that meets every Wednesday night in the local coffee house. There is no better way to practice the kind of endurance you will need to write your great book then to listen to someone read their 16,000 line sonnet celebrating the influence of Middle German on the language of today. Learn to drink endless amounts of very strong coffee! And, as you are studying to be an author, you might wish to bring an old, beaten up flask full of rotgut to flavor it. In the guide, you will be taught to do this subtly yet flamboyantly.
4. Instruct you in the art of Automatic Writing, so you can practice your best-selling craft without influencing your real life so much as an iota. Write your novel, poem or memoir by choosing from a bag full of words obtained by cutting up the guide, while enjoying those powerful reruns of American Idol and Storage Wars on the tube. Sin, cede, self, boy, girl, donkey, dad and did—they are all there, as are 20,000 more. Did you know that Hemingway, Faulkner and Frost all used automatic writing for their masterpieces? Neither did we.
5. Identify the top magazines, workshops and residencies you must read or attend before you write a single word. Using the interactive feature the guide will help you chose the 2 or 3 hundred most important workshops for you, from the nearly 2.5 million offered each week.
6. Guide you through the brave new world of on-line and self-publishing. It’s not your grandfather’s vanity press anymore. We will show you how to link your website or blog to the hundred most popular sites—including Stevieslaw, good for 10 or 12 hits in its own right. We will also clearly take you through the changing concept of ‘bestselling,’ which is defined by the American Booksellers Organization as the sale of at least 12 self-published print copies, to separate individuals or libraries, not including anyone who has ever changed your diaper.
Help make the LAGuide a best-seller. Buy a few. Cut them up and start writing—you famous author you.

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Stevieslaw: The Best Thing for You, Inc.

Posted on August 26, 2013 by stevieslaw

 

We had some friends over last night. They were away for most of the summer and we were happily using the time to catch up. While the others were drinking wine, I was drinking strong, black coffee. I am more or less always drinking, strong black coffee. Not only do I like the taste, but I had read somewhere that coffee was a powerful antioxidant and drinking more than six cups a day would keep you 26.2% healthier than non-coffee drinkers. I had finished the first pot—about four cups—and had carefully brewed a second pot, using a Kona coffee that’s about $50 a pound, when my friends rushed me, grabbed the pot, and emptied it into the kitchen sink—all while insanely shouting, “intervention, intervention, intervention.” “No,” I shouted back, “It’s the best thing for me.”

After my wife had managed to calm me down and stop my sobbing by using a powerful horse tranquilizer, my friends explained. They said that the latest research showed that drinking more than four cups of coffee a day shortened your lifespan (Times of India) and they felt they had to stop me. I was quick to point out that an NIH study just a year ago showed that coffee could increase your lifespan.

If you combine the two studies, it turns out you should drink no more than four cups of coffee until you are fifty and then start drinking as much coffee as you can slam down at fifty and one day. And that is the root of the problem. Clearly, there is a great deal of health information published weekly, daily and even hourly that completely contradicts or significantly modifies the research published the day before. Is it information you need to know? You betcha! Should you drink beet juice for healthy bones or is it best to avoid it? Eat sauerkraut for toe fungus or not? Take fish oil supplements with or without calcium and vitamin D. “To cheese or not to cheese.” Why is that even still a question?

Here, at Stevieslaw, we are determined to be your source for up to the minute health information. By following our guidelines, you might add seconds or even minutes to your life! To do this, we have formed “The Best Thing for You, Inc.” With your subscription, at a very nominal price, we will send you heath information directly at least every minute. Lunchtime? Should you eat the “General Tso Chicken” you have ordered for lunch or quickly replace it with the “Peking Duck?” Bedtime? Is the combination of thirty supplements and three turkey legs that allowed you to sleep last night a valid approach for tonight?

Subscribe and you will get the answer to these and to all of your burning health questions. It’s your life. Milk* it for every second.

 

*The ingestion of whole milk is no longer recommended.

 

 


 

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For Sylvia

Posted on August 12, 2013 by stevieslaw

I can laugh now,
but for a time
I was so scared
of my shadow;
that I would only
venture forth at
night, or noon
or during an
occasional
eclipse of the sun.
You might guess
that I’d be ridiculed,
what with carrying
a parasol to school
on sunny days in Spring,
but my brother was
three hundred pounds
of muscle, hung out
with the Amboy Dukes
and carried, as a
weapon, half a tree
trunk like a third arm.
From the time I was
six years old, the other
children called me sir.

My mother put an end
to it “toot sweet.”.
While no student
of psychology,
she took the time to
reason with me,
as she bent over a
steaming laundry tub,
in her ragged house dress,
like something out of Dickens.
She said quite clearly,
“Go outside right now,
or I will cripple you.”
My mother never hit,
but I took my sneakered
feet down the tenement
stairs, so quickly that they
barely touched the steps,
and then bareheaded,
I braved the April sun.

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Stevieslaw: Havahart

Posted on August 5, 2013 by stevieslaw

Havahart

In addition to his formidable math skills, Cousin Myron’s ability to rapidly read and faithfully remember anything he wishes has led cognitive scientists around the globe to line up to study him.

“All this poking and prodding is exhausting,” he has muttered on more than one occasion.

At lunch late last week, I asked Myron what he was currently reading.

“I’ve worked my way through all of the classified documents that have been released recently,” he said between bites of what I thought of as my knish.

“And your conclusions,” I asked—hoping against hope that I wouldn’t get a recital.

“Buy Havahart stock,” he counseled with a robust burp.

I have. Here is the rest of the story…

The US government, increasingly under pressure to do away with the unpopular drone program, has turned to human-sized Havahart traps as an alternative. The three-part plan is to humanely capture the bad guys, enlist a troop of hackers to steal their identities, and then to train them for some harmless occupation. The first three terrorists captured, for example, are currently working with the monk-fish industry based in Finland.

A critical element to the program is baiting the traps. At Stevieslaw, we have learned that initial attempts to bait the traps with hummus and pita went horribly wrong, at one point capturing three teenage Jewish boys returning from a Bar-Mitzvah in Queens. The boys, now reprogrammed and reunited with their families, learned all there is to know about potato farming in Idaho. The current thinking is to bait the traps with the most universally desired food product—potato chips. Bids are out to potato chip companies, but the smart money has the government turning to Pringles because of their uniformity and their ability to stay “fresh and whole” for hundreds and hundreds of years. Word has it that thousands of traps will be released shortly.

Remember to keep this story under your hat. If you talk it up, you could be charged under the current espionage laws and now you know how that is likely to go. One minute you’d be munching Pringles potato chips and the next you’d be baiting hooks in the Baltic.

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Coming Soon: The New Public Enemy Number One

Posted on July 25, 2013 by stevieslaw

Smokey Diamond, our intrepid reporter, was quite depressed after speaking to his cousin Charley this week. Charley retired from the City of Detroit some years ago after a fine, thirty seven year career as a dog catcher. It was only during the last few years of his tenure that he received the title of “Animal Control Officer;” a title which he can even today only mumble with a little goofy grin.

“Charley,” Smokey said “Just took a job as a greeter at Walmart.

Charley had a small pension from the city of Detroit and, with that and his and his wife’s social security, they are able to maintain their little house, take an occasional fishing trip to the great lakes with some friends and visit their kids and grandkids in Indiana and Iowa, once or twice a year.

“According to many of our civic leaders, noted Smokey, Charley’s lifestyle is the new definition of extravagant.”

Charley feels bad about it. “I didn’t know that when I was contributing to my pension plan that I was going to bring down the City of Detroit.”

“And now, Smokey continued, he feels trapped. The letters to the editor have started to get ugly and he is worried each time he and his wife leave their house that someone might start screaming at them or worse.”

“Charley starts next week,” she went on. “He hasn’t lost his pension yet, but he feels that once he does, other pension plans are sure to follow and the good jobs like Walmart Greeter or McDonald’s burger fryer will go fast.” “He foresees a time when the fast food industry will be dominated by really old people.”

The Committee for Compassionate Conservatism (or CCC) believes that Charley should feel ashamed. The CCC is of the opinion that State and Municipal pensions are merely a promise to pay—not any sort of guarantee. Their Spokesperson, Meme Mine, told Smokey that “we feel the whole concept of retirement, for workers, is destructive to their wellbeing. It is well known that once workers retire and accept a pension they tend to age and even to die. Here, we can take our cue from the natural world, she said, Are ants pensioned? Are bees pensioned?” The Committee will sponsor a huge advertising campaign this fall featuring the slogan, “Real American Workers Die on the Job.” “Pretty catchy,” she said with a smile.

There is a lot of money in State and Local pensions—the amount they are underfunded alone is estimated at 5 trillion dollars. With all that money floating around, we at Stevielsaw are left with two nagging questions.

  1. When will Corporate America get its hands on the money? And
  2. How can our Republican representatives at all levels facilitate the process?

Stay tuned.

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Stevieslaw: Privatizing Privatization

Posted on July 10, 2013 by stevieslaw

Smokey Diamond, our intrepid reporter, has had her nose to the grindstone in sniffing out not only today’s news, but tomorrow’s. She reports that the thought keeping the two major Republican think tanks awake at night is the slow pace of privatization. Both the ultra-conservative IGM group and the ultra, way past-conservative WGOs group had thought that most government services would have withered away by now, leaving the only government functions the fighting of wars in nations whose names we cannot spell and the occasional photo shoot of an uncomfortable looking John Boehner and a satanic looking Eric Cantor cutting the funds for some program or other that the young or sick depend on. Not so.
The reason says Republican strategist, Yua Domed, is that “we depend upon government to cut government.” “What we need on the Local, State and Federal level is a private company; say a bank or financial institution, to take over the process of privatizing government functions. Just think how much easier it would have been to privatize Social Security, just before the stock market crash, had some commercial entity that stood to make oodles of money on the change managed it.”
“Look for the Republicans to press this issue, as the 2014 elections approach,” voiced Smokey. “Some Republican strategists as well as most corporate leaders believe that there is some money the middle class is still hanging on to, which— by the nature of it being money— cannot belong to them.” “Based on the Republicans past achievements,” she said “They will use that same middle class, through creative voting procedures, to help them funnel that money to the rich.”

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My Voices Article for July/August (stevieslaw)

Posted on July 8, 2013 by stevieslaw

“The Only Thing—“. The LAGuide to the Art of Winning.
Here at Stevieslaw, we have all signed up for a gentle yoga program at the local YMCA. Once a week we try to lose ourselves in the formal stretches and poses—sunrise salutation, warrior one and warrior two, and others whose names I haven’t mastered yet. I am ashamed to say I haven’t mastered the ability to lose myself—to float egoless—either. I find that each week I spend a good part of the lesson time searching the group to see if I am winning. Yes, it’s gentle yoga and yes, many of the people who attend—often including me—need chairs to help them stand on one leg, but I still somehow view my yoga class as a competition. I want to win.
I share that desire with nearly all Americans. They want to win also. While more than 99% of the nation can’t tell you what Secretary of State John Kerry said about Syria this weekend—perhaps because they don’t know who Kerry is or what a Secretary of State does and, for that matter where Syria might be, more than 100% of our fellow citizens can tell you that Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers coined the phrase, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Of course, they would be wrong, as Vince apparently stole the quote from UCLA coach Henry Russell Sanders, who said it some ten years earlier. But I guess Vince was determined to be the one with the best quote ever. And because he is a winner we forgive him, just as we are quite willing to forgive our public enemy number 1’s, even going so far as to glorify them in movies. Think of Bonnie and Clyde. But forgive our number 2’s. Phooey. Yes, we are a competitive people. We grow up singing (from Annie Get Your Gun):
Anything you can do,
I can do better
I can do anything
Better than you.
And with that in mind, we take great pleasure and welcome responsibility in publishing, “The Only Thing—“The Less-intelligent-than-average-American Guide to the Art of Winning.” In the guide, you will learn that being a winner is often a matter of making the right choices.
1. In sports, you should pick a sport where the competition is not strong because no one wants to play it. My college, for example, had the number 1 pick-up-sticks team in the nation. Of course, the college was nestled in the mountains of Southern Appalachia and we could all practice by attempting to pick up rattlesnakes blindfolded, but that needn’t be your story. In the guide, we identify 500 of the least popular sports ever.
2. In sporting events, you must remember that if the team you root for is number 1, than you are number 1. Yes, chanting we’re number one, as you gulp your beer and munch your chips by the TV in air conditioned comfort, is certainly the moral equivalent of winning the big match played for over four hours In 110 degree heat. Hey, you have the t-shirt. Choose well! My friends are Mets fans. Why? My older brother, Bad Barry, introduced me to an important concept in the mid-fifties, when he declared that I was a NY Yankee, Green Bay Packer and Boston Celtic fan. I was only eleven months old at the time, but still old enough to know that when BadB spoke, you listened and simply shook your head yes. Find the best of the best in the Guide. Moreover, our interactive feature will allow you to change teams, instantly, as conditions change.
3. In games, you must choose your competition with the same care you use to choose self-help guides. You can be the words-with-friends champ if every member of your playing group is taking English as a second language on Wednesday nights at the local high school. Chess champ—register for classes for infants on line. Bridge, no sweat, give lessons to those who know so little of the game that they don’t even know the number of cards in a deck.
4. Always remember that being number 1 clearly extends to your offspring and your offspring’s offspring. Sure, bragging is fine but the real war for number one is being fought out in ever more outrageous bumper stickers. Your kid is an honor student? My kid eats honor students for lunch. Now with the simple cd included in the guide and some help from our spy agency, The NSA, you can move on to the brave new world of interactive bumper stickers. You will have the ability to evaluate the lives of the people in all the cars around you, find their weak points and rotate through a series of bumper stickers establishing that you are much, much better than they will ever be.
5. Be number 1 forever. We will identify the most probable locations of the fountain of youth. Find it and be the oldest person ever. That’s number 1.
Be a winner. Buy the guide. Then use it— not to win one for “the gipper”, but to win one for your Number 1—you.

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Thursdays with John Prine (stevieslaw)

Posted on June 27, 2013 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Thursday with John Prine
While strolling around my garden this morning as a light warm rain came down, who should I run into—way back on the other side of the roses—but my old friend John Prine. We know him from way back—back in the day, as they say now. As I recall (or perhaps invented), he used to keep a lit cigarette tucked between his guitar strings as he played and sang. Sure enough, he was singing “Spanish Pipedream,” an old favorite:
She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the juke box broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke

Chorus:
Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own

Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
Well, she danced around the bar room and she did the hoochy-coo
Yeah she sang her song all night long, tellin’ me what to do

Repeat chorus:

Well, I was young and hungry and about to leave that place
When just as I was leavin’, well she looked me in the face
I said “You must know the answer.”
“She said, “No but I’ll give it a try.”
And to this very day we’ve been livin’ our way
And here is the reason why

We blew up our T.V. threw away our paper
Went to the country, built us a home
Had a lot of children, fed ’em on peaches
They all found Jesus on their own
So where did John come from? I’ve no idea. Still in our time, when the bottom line seems the answer to everything, it’s nice to know that my thoughts—all of our thoughts— can take a goes to b, with some c, and come up with peach pie. Hi, my name is Steve and I am not an IBMer. Let’s build a better planet (see chorus).

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