Random, with Bonus Food Observations

Random Again. Jumbled original thought. Curated.

If I am allowed even a day of being alert and understanding my own imminent demise I will text all the old golf buddies and ask them in lieu of flowers please go to a local Bar and offer to buy a round in memory of all the laughs and shenanigans. My last waking hope would be there is a guy sitting at that bar with two bucks left in his pocket wondering how he is going to get the next three dollar beer. When it just magically appears. I’d go out with a smile for sure if that were to happen.

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People tweeting by the hour against LIV golf amaze me. As if the Saudis offered them even an extra fifty grand to leave their job and compete with their old firm tomorrow morning they wouldn’t leap at the chance. How can anyone hold it against a pro golfer to take four hundred million? All while supporting a tour that will see 1/2 the field trunk slam this week at a PGA tournament and get zero money. No funds to cover expenses, travel, hotel, caddy. Not only do you suffer the humiliation of not making the weekend, you are out-of-pocket three grand. One back ache away from losing your entire career and you are supposed to turn down four hundred million?

You people out there are insane. Tradition? Try spending it.

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Trump, Trump, Trump.

The quicker the Left understands that we know who he is, we get it, he is boorish, loud, self-absorbed, and exaggerates everything his way. But he is our weapon of choice to attempt to pry the iron grip the Left has on government and all major institutions. We want the Left destroyed completely. Smaller government. No more “Woke” Hollywood. No more biased newspapers of record. Closed borders. And tariffs that reinvigorate American manufacturing.

It isn’t about Trump. It’s about You, on the Left.

You smug assholes need to be brought low. Now.

And we will use Trump to make that happen. Or lose and try again. We have nothing to lose anyway, you’ve taken it all from us.

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Inflation is kicking everyone’s ass and in any normal election season would be the only thing anyone talks about. There is no election in history the administration survives this level of inflation, and this economy.

If the Democrats survive this it will be by the grace of stuffed ballot boxes. Not the will of the people.

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All the tourists run down to Florida in January, February. The weather is hit and miss. But now, right now, Oh My God. 83 everyday. Blue skies that go on forever. A light beach breeze that is still cool, not yet tainted by humidity. April-May is South Florida Heaven. And it is even better because the car carriers have taken away the snow birds, the tourists don’t line the walking paths, and traffic is halved or more.

Even the Left Wing can’t sour a South Florida mood when you walk out the door to 83, sunny, and breezy.

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I’m balancing meals. That way it doesn’t feel like sacrifice. One night you buy up the expensive grouper, the thick Angus steaks. Another night you eat a bratwurst or two, open a cheap box of spaghetti with an inexpensive jar of sauce. You whipsaw nightly from $ 50 dinners at home to $ 6 dinners at home. Hoping the average keeps the bank account solvent. There are nights a cold cut sub for dinner is enough.

These days you have to do something when grouper hits $ 28 a pound. And two decent steaks from the butcher’s market set you back fifty bucks and more.

I’ve actually considered drinking again just to be able to hit happy hours where we can eat less expensively than home and get the added benefit of a night out.

Inflation has me thinking about sacrificing the liver to alcohol. Never thought that would happen.

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Isn’t it just incredible you can reasonably spend fifty, sixty dollars on making dinner at home for two? You go out and get two nice steaks at the butchers market, fifty bucks. Buy up a russet, another two-fifty. Grab a wrap of asparagus, five bucks. On the way by you see a slice of NY cheesecake, seven dollars, why not? Wham, you’ve just made dinner at home $ 65 plus given the condiments. Not out mind you, not in the restaurant, at home.

Am I alone in this? Are you all eating from Costco at 1/2 that for a similar meal?

Maybe I’m doing it wrong. But you should see the steaks and seafood at Carmine’s Market. Makes Costco product look like it should be fed to the animals.

Besides you end up buying packages so large at Costco the last two cuts of salmon are freezer burned by the time you cook them. No thanks. I’ll stay at Carmine’s. I’m nearing the end, life is short. Farm raised salmon? I can’t, I just can’t. I won’t.

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The ice cream section is no longer the ice cream section, it has morphed into a candy store. You want a little vanilla with your M&M’s, or Oreo’s, or Twix? What happened to just eating ice cream? It is all swirls of caramel, brownie, cookies, and candy.

Doesn’t anyone just like ice cream anymore? Does your ice cream fix have to come with a pound of Snickers?

My kingdom for a pint of Lady Borden French Vanilla. No caramel, no Hershey’s chocolate syrup, no whipped cream, no cherry, no sprinkles, no cookie or candy pieces. French vanilla ice cream. And a full pint, don’t cut me to twelve ounces.

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I have removed professional baseball from my life completely. I do not miss it even for a second. Can’t name a player, probably can’t identify some of the teams. Is baseball still even a thing?

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I want more than anything in my life to get the chance to fly an ultralight. I took flying lessons in my twenties and solo’d a dozen times. Even if it was just a Cessna 150, or even a Cessna 152, when you are coming in for a landing and know that your survival depends on a safe landing, and it is all on you, man, that will get your attention.

A few I 95 exits away there appears to be a club that meets and flies ultralights together. When I fully retire I’m going to try to talk my way into getting hold of one of those ultralights and flying it. Flying over the beach waving to family and friends. With a lawn mower engine, a modified bike body, and some canvas wings. I absolutely loved flying a plane. But there I was one day flying over the house with the pregnant wife waving from the front lawn, tilting the wings back-and-forth to say “hi”, when I realized I couldn’t afford flying lessons and the baby too. Since the wife became attached to the boy the flying lessons had to go.

Before I take the big dirt bath I wanna fly an ultralight. Which from what I hear about them might hasten the dirt bath. Besides, I don’t want a dirt bath, I wanna be in one of those drawers in a mausoleum. Above ground. I’m claustrophobic. Marilyn got one of those, and in my own head I’m as pretty as she is.

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Either the selling game has changed or I’ve aged out of the demographic. I go to meet prospective customers, they say things so absurd I sit there dumbfounded. I tell them things about our products and they respond with inane disconnected comments that aren’t about the products we are discussing at all. And this new generation, holy Hell, their minds are locked up tighter than a drum. They refuse to listen to anything. They know it all before they sit down, and tell you up front they won’t be convinced of anything different in some half-hour meeting with you.

You expect the dad who owns the store to be a skeptic, but when the kids come into a meeting shut down completely you wonder if the store will survive dad’s demise.

They compare products from a completely different segment, refuse to acknowledge a clear product advantage you show them, and will openly show disdain by looking at their phone frequently.

Why set the meeting if you have no intention of listening? And possess pre-conceived hard and fast notions.

I’ll listen all day to you about your understanding of your customers, location, sales, current product lines, and future plans. But you don’t want to hear anything about what we do well?

God get me another three years so I can semi-retire and get out of this game.

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I hope you are sitting down. So the wife and I go through “Masters of the Air” series and it was great. Then we watch something on the Pacific Theatre of WWII, the Pacific version of “Band of Brothers”. Just excellent.

The wife chirps up, “Hey, everyone on social media is talking about this Reindeer thing, it’s like a horror thing they just came out with, wanna see it”?

She doesn’t tell me that all the chatter is from film critics. Critics who are so out of touch with the American fly-over country taste that it has become ridiculous. You could almost watch the opposite of what the critics love and see great fare.

So we watch this “horror” show of “Baby Reindeer” or some such title.

Oh my God, it’s another “Saltburn”. The main character wannabe comedian is a passive thrill junkie who allows himself to be raped repeatedly by a male TV executive who drugs him and fondles and rapes him. He goes back to the guy’s house repeatedly even after realizing the man has raped him while he was unconscious. And that isn’t even the plot line.

He meets a convicted and previously jailed stalker who begins to stalk him. I mean 60 texts a day or more, visits to the bar where he works, she makes his life a living Hell. But something in him actually gets off on it all. There are perverted scenes of him uh, “thrilling” himself over both the homosexual encounter of being raped, as well as the stalker and her act.

In between we are treated to his lame comedy performances. It is a “true” story supposedly, and more creepy than horror.

Oh, and of course he had a trans girl friend. He went on a trans dating service. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. He is apparently “confused” about his sexuality. I don’t know how you get confused, I never had a friend who said to me, “I can’t decide if I want to sleep with a man or not”. If he did I’d say, go to the beach. Who do you look at, the men, or the women in bikinis. If he answered “Men”, I’d say go for it dude, you are solid gay.

The thing I fail to understand about such productions is that I end up just loathing the main character and I wonder how they think they can get you to watch a seven part series when you don’t care about the main character, you hate him and think at some point during the series he deserves what be gets for being such an asshole.

Once we got to the start of episode three I told the wife we had to finish the damn thing in one night because it was creeping me out so bad I couldn’t bare the thought of stringing out such creepy crap over more than one evening. And I had to see if the stalker got killed, or what the end game was in this mess. Now I feel like I just lost an evening of my life to creepy filth.

The wife has lost dibs on calling the next series. After watching she started to note all the people online talking about this “Reindeer” show and that is when I noticed it was all critics.

To have a successful series on right now you have to have some lifestyle that is completely crazed and out of the mainstream, a gay plot line, a trans character and plot line, and throw in a fat, homely stalker for good measure. Winner!

Oh, and the dad was raped as a boy in the Catholic Church of his youth. That was a throw-away in the film. Who hasn’t done crack, and heroin, been raped while passed out, and had their dad reveal the Priests abused them. How vanilla. Wasn’t that just conversation over lunch yesterday for you?

How bad does a show have to be where that part is just added material, glommed on for just a tweak of added shock value. Don’t watch this baby reindeer thing not unless you are a seriously warped individual. Damn thing had zero redeeming value.

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Regarding the salaries of WNBA players. If you think they should be better paid then buy season tickets, go to the games, buy the jerseys, support the league. Boost ratings.

Otherwise, say nothing. Water seeks its own level.

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Will you look at that, the new head of NPR has a background with the WEF, the DoD, government, and no actual journalism experience. Looks suspiciously to me like the kind of person who would really be CIA with a nice cover story to then propagandize on the public dime from the Left playbook.

Her “TED” talk against capitalism, in favor of non-binary gender categorization, and many other comments appear to paint her far, far, Left.

I mean who saw that coming for NPR? I’m so happy the Republicans didn’t kill funding public radio when they had control over all three branches of the government, So our collective tax dollars can be spent to sell DNC talking points.

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The LA Times has a headline, “if ten straight months of record heat isn’t climate change then what is it”?

1. You need to question the sources

2. the earth has been around billions of years. We’ve had ice ages, times of warming. you simply cannot measure a year of climate and determine anything. anything at all. it’s less than a blink of an eye in time.

3. make sure you get second and third source confirmation, and view and read the skeptics as well. all the money today is funding the “climate change bad” side, which produces more hysterical articles.

4. when Barbra Streisand sells the Santa Barbara waterfront, and Obama sells his Nantucket waterfront, then panic. Until then, stay calm.

5. remember, there are 1980’s TV news predictions that 25% of Florida would be a flooded mess today. And 1960’s TV news predictions that overpopulation by 2010 would lead to mass starvation. And that was from “experts”. So far Al Gore has yet to be right about any prediction. Even one.

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Thank God I got into Florida before it all disappeared. Getting to experience the old style Tiki bars where you could get a beer for $ 2, and a Grouper sandwich under $10. And with a musician playing during lunch no less.

After the 2008 crash golf courses were hurting, they’d have Summer memberships on the cheap. Six months at world class courses for like 2 grand. I’d be lounging in the Breakers locker room after 18, using the sauna, drinking a Heineken in one of their cushy robes. Finish up lounging and walking across the street to their bars, sit and watch the fish inside their fish tank bar. Chat up rich tourists. Go out to the West course, play a world class course for the $ 25 cart fees.

Now?

God damned New York and Northeast money has chased all the prices to the hilt. No bargains to be found anymore and they no longer have to “slum it” by offering Summer memberships to low life’s like myself to keep the doors open.

Oh well. There was a time, not so long ago, there I was reading the financial pages in the small Breakers locker room, watching the Golf Channel and MSNBC and the Money-Honey, drinking a cold Heineken to cool down from the sauna. And wondering how I managed to shoot all 8’s on a course only 5,900 yards. Hey look, I did par those two 96 yard par 3’s.

Alas all that money that has poured into Florida has murdered the ability for people of my ilk to hob nob. No more hearing the bartender at HMF greet me with “Hi Michael”, and making the tourists lining the bar thinking “who the hell is this guy”.

No more hearing those wonderful words “I’ll leave your car up, Mr. Herman”, meaning they’d leave it in the circle at the front, not way out in the parking lot where I have to wait all day for my car to come around at valet. I used to love seeing my little two seat Mercedes parked along with the Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Bentleys.

Now I’m just a public course schlep again. And not even that, I have to drive to Martin County to be able to afford to play.

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…..Nobody knows…..”

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Race, race, race. Dear people who see race in everything. I’m lily-white. Drive a little Mercedes. Can stick my pinky out with the best of them. I can be conversant and make pleasant conversation with anyone. Architects? Well I really don’t like the Mies Van Der Rohe “glass and brass” styling I have to say, nor am I a fan of the minimalism of Frank Lloyd Wright, too boxy and uncomfortable. Sports? Oh man, Ray Lewis was a beast, I’d put his talents up against Lawrence Taylor any day. History? Well it is true that England stood as a bulwark keeping the Nazi threat at bay as we stayed out of the war, and you have to give one man a great deal of credit, Winston Churchill kept spirits high as the bombs came down.

See? I can sit in the nicest restaurant and we can have pleasant conversation all day.

But guess what? The finest country clubs in the country wouldn’t let me near the gates, same as any person of color. Unless I was applying to wash dishes.

the only color in America that means anything today is green. As in the color of cash.

Everyone can see Jeff Bezos as a man is an asshole extreme. Same with Zuckerberg. But their cash opens every door.

It ain’t race man, its money. Get over yourself.

I’m not playing Seminole tomorrow either. Though I would like to have a discussion there over Donald Ross and his designs verses Jack Nicklaus and his. Even tricked up I prefer the Donald Ross because, well,….

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I didn’t do all that well in life, but I did well enough. And I’d give anything, I mean anything, to be able to go back to 1959, 1960, and fund a trip for my mother and father to go to Las Vegas on a VIP tour. Seeing Sinatra at the best table in the house. Eating a fine meal out every night with dancing, music. Having serious pocket money so playing the tables was of no financial concern. All expenses paid and nothing too good for them, I’d want to go back, and send them anonymously to Vegas and Palm Springs for weeks on end.

For my dad, a welder, to get the chance to visit Las Vegas in it’s prime, see all the shows, eat the finest steaks, relax pool side. Maybe leave there and head to Palm Springs, spend a few weeks in the sunshine during those long Winter months. The Palm Springs of lore, of Palm Trees, martinis, and celebrities. When it was still a small town, and you could rub elbows with the high and mighty.

Cost be damned if I could see my father sitting stage side, watching Sinatra croon, hearing Dean sing, watching Rickles rip the crowd, dad included, that would mean so much to me. Then have him sit poolside in the backyard of a mid-century modern, In Palm Springs, the mountains in the background, the weather perfect in December, reservations at Melvyns later that night. Afternoons for naps, not a financial care in the world.

If I could make that happen you can’t imagine what I’d sacrifice.

There is a movie in there somewhere. Some rich guy can time travel, so that is what he does. funds a lifestyle for his parents they could never imagine. Take them out of their lower middle class lives and send them to the stratosphere, if just for a month.

Maybe a Cadillac at the curb awaiting their arrival back home.

For all their sacrifice I owe my parents a trillion times that and more. A debt I couldn’t repay in a thousand lifetimes. 1960 Vegas. my welder dad in line to see Frank, nice suit, wad of cash, oh, man. I’d give the next 20 years, my last 20, if I could make that happen somehow.

I tell my own children they stand on the shoulders of giants.

They have no real idea.

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