Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions

Baggage from Air Canada finally arrived tonight, after three days of swimming in my father's size 44 checkered pajama bottoms, looking like a schlepper, Lucky I've been too busy stuffing my face at these amazing buffets. Last night ate six different kinds of fish, fowl and meat. Fois gras, chopped liver, tuna slices, chicken brochette, duck a l'orange and lamb. Ate in the biggest succah I've ever been in, and enjoyed a Simcha Torah service with ruach to spare. Typical Israeli answer at the pool. I ask the locker attend if it's okay for my son to go in without shoes and a t-shirt. His reply: 'Do you expect him to wear a suit?' Forget about the impression you get about Israel from the media. For a tourist it seems a lot more like the old MAD magazine feature, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

Shalom...

The Joys of Travel

Not sure what day it is -- the trip to Israel seems like a long long day. So here's our first adventure: Fly Air Canada from Montreal - Toronto - Tel Aviv. Check into MTL, goes smoothly. As we are about to board plane in TO to Tel Aviv, the AC check-out lady pulls my wife, Mylene,  aside and abruptly tells her, she can't get on plane. Long story over a stupid passport technicality that eventually proved to be a non-issue. after making a big scene at gate, with my 7 year old son bawling, an AC supervisor finally steps in and for some unknown reason, allows my wife to board. Everything goes fine at customs, but 2 of our bags are missing, supposed to come in on a flight 2 days later. Meanwhile AC in TO repeated to us 3 times that all our bags got on plane. The joys of travelling...Still managed to get a pretty full beach day in, but its a day and a half later and I am so time disoriented...

The Rise and Fall of Fiction: Part 2

Sad to say but I think the glory days of fiction are over. There's just too much digital content, too many platforms and devices to compete with. People are losing their attention spans, and then there's the Gen Y'ers who are basically illiterate. They will only read if it's a necessity like getting through a course at school. (For more on Gen Y, check out Jason Calacanis's piece: http://calacanis.com/2010/04/27/red-jackson-gen-y-loyalty/). My prediction is that only blockbuster novels from major authors like Jonathan Franken will survive. The smaller literary writers like Sam Lipsyte, of whom I'm a big fan, will struggle. E-books are  taking over, bookstores are dying. When I was a student I remember standing between the towering stacks in the library thinking: If no one ever wrote another word, it would be ok. So much already written, too many great works to even list, what more is there to say? I may be taking this to an extreme, there will always be books, new masterpieces and writers, just a lot less. Culture is on the decline and it's too late to turn back the invasion of the barbarians.

More on Franzen's Freedom

Forget what the Atlantic critic wrote about Freedom: that the characters are uninteresting and clichéd, that the prose is puerile. It's not true. Maybe those critics recognize the pathos of their own lives while reading Franzen. Quiet lives of desperation. Great literature exposes the truth about human nature. It makes us uncomfortable. Most people don't get to realize their dreams, are victims of circumstance or simply make bad choices. Franzen cuts through all this in Freedom and it hits home hard. That's what great writing is all about. And if the critic finds his prose and characters too common for his taste, think about Henry Miller's language and Robert Russo's characters. Sounds to me like the Atlantic critic has an axe to grind with the today's writers when he questions why we should even bother reading them, when we can read the classics. Well, if I have to choose between reading a classic like Pride and Prejudice or Freedom, I'll choose the latter. And so will millions of others...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/10/smaller-than-life/8212/

Kevins Online

One of my guilty pleasures is following Kevin Smith's podcasts, mainly Smodcast and have listened to a couple of the new ones with Jason Mewes. Keep waiting to hear him say something funny or witty, but can honestly report that this has yet to happen. I'm amazed that the man who made some of my favorite movies like Clerks, Mall Rats and Chasing Amy, is so not-funny. Then again, after Amy, Smith's movies are big stinkers and I've always had the impression that he has nothing left to say. He's become kind of like the Howard Stern of Hollywood. Still, I listen to the podcasts because I like his honesty and have a weakness for sophomoric conversation. I have to give Smith credit though for working his audience so extensively, both through the Internet and even in print with his books. I can't figure out why he has so many fans, but I will still check in regularly to the Smodcast trying to figure it all out.

Now Kevin Pollack's online chat show / podcast is another story. I discovered what an incredibly gifted comedian / interviewer he is. His impersonations, namely of Christopher Walken and Woody Allen are the best I've ever seen and his stand-up is equally brilliant. His interviews run long and he delves deep into the interviewee. Great guests too, puts Leno to shame, no comparison.

The last Kevin I follow, although not religiously, is Kevin Rose on his DIGG podcast. Think he's the coolest of the Kevins, smart,  natural and he just seems like a good guy. Took me awhile to get into that podcast though, found it too rock 'n roll at first for my taste and I'm not crazy about his co-host, Pudgy Guy with the bad haircut. But they cover lots of good stories while quaffing down premium beer and catching a little buzz.

This Week In Social Media

This Week In Social Media is a must-watch podcast for anyone and everyone. While I'm not a huge fan of the host and panel, they know their stuff and always have great guests. This podcast keeps you up to date with all that is important and going on in social media- you don't have to even follow anything else. I've never failed to pick up a tip or two from every podcast. Guaranteed time well spent.

http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-social-media/

Franzen, Freedom and Style

Unlike any other year, where I'm usually on pace to read about a dozen and a half serious works, a dozen of which are literary fiction, this year I have been spending all my free time listening and watching podcasts or iTunes University lectures. It's been a struggle to read even though I now have both a Kindle and iPad. When I have been reading, it's been the free samples you can download, so like a kid in a candy stores I've read a bunch excerpts, but have not bought any. Finally took the plunge and bought Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom and ripped through a few chapters since. Makes me realize what great writing is: storytelling. Franzen's writing is so crisp that you barely even notice it, it's as if you're eating words. What hits me hard about Franzen's greatness, is his deep understanding of human nature. f
Franzen's character portrayals cut to the core without any flash or artifice. His writing style reminds me a lot of Wally Lamb, the stories are so powerful that it's not an effort to read on. Made me think how different my (modest) writing style and approach is. I like the details, the black humor, the outlandishness of a situation and think that the story is secondary. This is why I love S.J. Perelman; each sentence he writes is a work of art in itself, his wit always shines and the stories seem to be there mainly as a platform for style. There still is something to be said for style over substance...

Failing Dreams

It was clear to LeVine that it was time to leave town, time to reinvent himself yet again. Time to go straight, time to let go of the lies. As he lay in bed struggling to fall asleep, fantasizing about life in solitary confinement in a Monte Carlo prison where all he could do was read the bible and look out onto the Mediterranean from his modest cell window, he wondered why he was such a psychopathic bullshitter. It didn't make sense. He certainly didn't need to do it for business. LeVine was actually scrupulously honest in his dealings and over the years had made his clients piles of money. He was a social hit in all of the many circles he traveled, not to mention a natural athlete who excelled in every sport he played.

LeVine didn't have to fake anything. But how he pined to fail on a grand scale. Bigger than the Iberville flunkers, more glorious than One-Ball Blitt, more dangerous than Ricky Frick, more hapless than LeVine's third best friend,  Beano Wax.

                                                          
The Legend of Beano Wax

Benjy “Beano” Wax, a fellow flunker, avid barbecue sauce enthusiast and Batman imposter. Beano was generally a quiet neb with a sad, hound dog countenance...until that is, he’d quaff down a cup of the world famous Iberville Bar-B-Q French fry sauce – then he became Batman.

Everyone loved the famous sauce – but as a condiment on their fries or chicken, not straight up like Beano. He’d chug it down, get high on lard and then drift off into a delusional state where he actually believed that he was Batman. Then Beano would run up and down (preferably staircases) screaming, “Batman” and barf his grease-drenched guts out.

Beaver Beaudoin, the stout buck-toothed school janitor, despised Beano Wax for the obvious reasons. No matter how much a janitor may be in love with his job, and Beaver loved his job like dear life itself, he never gets used to mopping up puke on a regular basis – even if it’s Batman’s. But when Beano barfed on the Quebec flag, Beaver had had enough.

“You can puke on my floor, you can puke on my head, but you cannot puke on my flag. Eider dat putz goes or I go,” Beaver threatened to Principal Resnick.

And that really was a threat to take seriously.  Gurion Academy without Beaver? That would be the tragic loss of an institution. Beaver was the most beloved man in the school. He was the heart, the soul, the righteous goy of Gurion Academy.

Who retrieved Mikey Finkelstein’s cherished autographed Hank Aaron baseball when Soupy Segal threw it up on the school roof? Beaver!

Who fished out Marla Greenstein’s retainer from the dreaded third stall in the girl’s bathroom? Beaver!

   

And whose daughter was it behind the dumpster, off whom Ira Shtern copped his first feel in sixth grade? (And that wasn’t bullshit). Beaver’s! 

Principal Resnick acted swiftly and decisively, slapping Beano Wax with a lifetime ban from Iberville

Bar-B-Q. Beaver was temporarily appeased.

And it worked – for two whole weeks. Beano may have had the shakes, but he went cold turkey and the school   stairwells remained as pristine and barf-free as an Arctic iceberg. Still, Beano had to answer the call of that little retardo voice from within. His new passion became pencil-case self-mutilation. He’d color his tongue with his cartridge pen (peacock blue was his favorite flavor), pierce his fingers with his compass and stuff pencil erasers in his ears.

There was however, an economic fallout from the Beano Wax sauce ban. He had a thirty five cent a day habit and Tito Carcinomas, the proud and cheap owner of Iberville Bar-B-Q, lamented about his plummeting barbeque sauce sales.

“This is killing my sauce business. The peoples is thinking that somethings wrong with the sauce if Beano no drink it,” he confided to Joey Prager. “I swear on the tomb of my mother in Corfu, that Beano Wax will live again to drink my sauce – even if I have to give it to him for free!”

One day after school Tito lured Beano over to his restaurant, letting him in through the back door. His proposal to Beano: he would supply him with all the sauce he could drink - gratis for one whole month. All Beano would have to do was to drink the elixir of the gods in front of the restaurant.

“Just no be Batman and no puke,” Tito warned. “You puke and I cut your neck...and this for really. I once killed a man in Corfu for just farting in my taverna in the presence of my sainted mother.” Beano prayed that that story really wasn’t true; he just cut a wicked one.     

The next day Beano slipped out of school during lunch and procured his contraband cup of sauce. He chugged down his tasty fix with vengeance and then, of course, shifted into auto super-hero mode. He raced down the street back to school, yelling all the while at the top of his lungs, “Baaaaat-maaaaaaannn!” Then he bolted inside the school, charged up the main staircase and screamed,

“Baaaaat-maaaaaaannn!”  Naturally Beano hurled and hurled and hurled, over the staircase and down below onto the shiny bald pate of Principal Resnick.

Resnick was feeling magnanimous the day of judgement. The intrepid Goldie Nemitz had just written a flattering profile on him in the Iberville Examiner. Goldie, the voice of Iberville, named Resnick as Iberville’s Educator of the Year and even gave him a box of Bic pens to mark the occasion. He could’ve...he should’ve expelled Beano from Gurion Academy, but since he had a heart, he would give the disturbed boy one last chance – but the kid had to lay off the sauce.

 “For Benjamin’s own good,” Resnick told Beano’s parents, “he should repeat the school year.”

Has anything ever done in the name of, “for your own good,” not resulted in disaster? Incredibly, Beano’s dad, Seymour, agreed with Resnick.

“Benjy is a fucken retard, just like your brother, what’s-his-name, the great thespian,” Seymour Wax bitched to his wife, Florrie during the meeting with Resnick.

Ever since Howard Melnick, (stage name: Mel Howard), inherited the entire Melnick fortune of six hundred and seventy thousand dollars and the condo in Florida, Seymour Wax could not bear to utter his brother-in-law’s name.

“Thank God, we’re okay and don’t need the money,” Florrie would say.

“We don’t need the money? Are you crazy? Do you know how tough the fake necktie market is these days?” Seymour answered.

“We’ll get by Seymour. We always do, but Mother was worried for Howard, that he couldn’t make a living. Since when is it a sin that a mother should provide for her son?”

“Since she has a son-in-law in the fake necktie business and a grandson who’s a complete meshuganeh. The great thespian never worked a day in his life. What did he do to deserve all of the inheritance?” But Seymour’s rants were all in vain and he knew it. Florrie Wax, like all Iberville women, would defend their useless baby brothers till the bitter end.

“Howard is no retard,” Florrie explained to Principal Resnick, “he just plays one on his show on CBC.” 

 “His show, she says,” Seymour Wax spat. “The schlub has a bit part as a retard. Since when does that make it his show?”

Resnick sighed and regretted that he never took that job at the goyische school in Sheffield Heights. Say what you want about goyim, about their drinking and hunting and passion for cars; but they were polite and infinitely easier to deal with than fellow yids.     

  

“Getting back to Benjamin, Mr. and Mrs. Wax. He could use some maturity building. It would be best for everyone if we held him back a year. In the large scheme of things, a year is nothing in the course of a lifetime.”   

But the emesse was, that like most of the educators, Principal Resnick’s decision was petty and spiteful.

“Rita,” Resnick told his wife while preparing for sex the night before that meeting, “that fucking little retard Benjamin Wax will pay for puking on my head.”

Resnick slipped on a pair of Rita’s pantyhose and became instantaneously aroused. “I’m going to make an example of that little puke,” Resnick said as he jammed his foot inside one of Rita’s high-heeled shoes. It was a tight fit, but he could squeeze into them. Resnick thanked God that his wife had such large feet. He could never imagine himself, Iberville’s Educator of the Year, shopping at Shoe Biz for stilettos.  

“What’s a year?” Before he flunked, Beano Wax was just another mixed-up kid among many in Iberville.  No one flunked Chuckie Glick for peeing in a garbage can – of course, Chuckie’s father Barney, owned Jean Stop, a successful chain of seventy stores across Canada. And no one flunked out Manny Isaif for selling bogus fund-raising school chocolate bars; his father was President of the Canadian branch of the Jewish National Fund. But Beano’s father, Seymour Wax was just a pain-in-the-ass schlepper who owned a shitty little company that manufactured fake neckties. Who gave a shit?  And they certainly didn’t give a shit for Beano, who was now branded a “flunker,” the modern day version of the village idiot.

“They dropped him on his head when he was a baby.”

“They squeezed the forceps too hard when he was born.”

“His twin brother got both of the brains.”

Fuck what they said. No one in Iberville knew anything, but they were always right. Beano Wax was just a barbeque sauce addict and a little odd – end of story. What could his parents do? Send him to a condiment detox center? 

Beano Wax deserved better, and LeVine might have been the only other person to believe that. Maybe it was because both boys flunked out together during the same school year, but Frankie X stood by Beano to the bitter end – and it was a bitter end.

Beano was no retard – LeVine would’ve never hung out with him if that was true. So Beano went a little mental every now and then – who doesn’t?

Beano miserably plodded on through an undistinguished academic career, although he did graduate high school. His father made an effort to get to know him better and took him into his shitty little fake necktie business. And while Beano never moved out of his house, he at least replaced his Batman posters with posters of Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs. The man was evolving. Not only that, but he helped his father transform the business from a shitty little fake necktie business, to a nice little real necktie business. To his credit, Beano convinced his stubborn father that fake ties were not only out, but that they were never in.

Meanwhile, Beano squirreled away a tidy sum of money and bought himself a souped-up 1970 green Shelby Mustang. But no matter how hard Beano Wax tried to be cool, to fellow Ibervillians, he would always be “the retarded flunker who pukes barbeque sauce and thinks he’s Batman.”  Iberville was an unforgiving place and even on Yom Kippur in synagogue, they’d mock him. Naturally, Beano couldn’t get laid in Iberville, even after he bought his 1970 green souped-up Shelby Mustang.

 “Green is for fucking weirdoes,” they said.

Finally during Christmas vacation, when Beano was twenty-one, he ventured out of Iberville, driving down with LeVine to Fort Lauderdale to try to his luck on girls from New Jersey. Maybe they’d do him just for his car? And you know what? They did! He scored, he scored! Halleluiah, Beano Wax scored! Twice. First, with a pug breeder from Poughkeepsie who looked suspiciously part pug, and the second time with a doughy dental assistant from New Jersey named Darlene.

To celebrate, Beano treated all the boys, (actually just his stuttering cousin Reuven Fagen and LeVine), to a rib dinner at Travis Stedry’s, famous for its spicy Texas barbeque sauce. And how good that sauce tasted! Beano barely nibbled at his Flintstonian-sized rack of ribs, before he heartily chugged down three cups of the piquant Texas barbeque sauce.

Then, after dinner, while crossing the street on the main strip, Beano had a relapse. And so he bellowed out to the seraphim above, “Baaaat-maaaan!!!!” Then he had a massive puking attack, so violent in fact, that he collapsed on the street. Tragically, LeVine and  Reuven

Fagen couldn’t get Beano up in time, and while lying in a pool of his own vomit in the middle of the intersection, Beano Wax got run over by a speeding black Trans Am.

“At least he got l-l-laid before he d-d-died,” Reuven Fagen told the mourners at the shiva.

     

At least.

Tales of the Shul

Finally figured out the best strategy preparing for a fast. Drank a liter of water and ate a tin of tuna and loaded up on carbs all day and had the easiest Yom Kippur fast ever. No parched throat, no dizziness, felt strong all day...

Sitting in there in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, feeling pretty guilty about my Mocking posting. True, it's fiction and must be able to write freely, but nonetheless it's still a bit ratfinky. Still, too much material there to mine. Characters to explore:

Papa Bear and Cubs
Papa's Bear's bro who refuses lifts
The leaflet and the prez
Joe Franken, the shrunken feminine head sporting a sideways kipah
The Renaissance man and Mr. S's man-crush
Overflowing at the mechitzah
The 70's Man
Wizard of Oz behind the curtain
Lady with mouth perpetually agape
Larry the Kiddish Destroyer
Tsar Nicholas and the little princes
Rabbi Cornball
Cough Drop Man
Larry the Social Worker
Ivanhoe, captain of the Archery Maccabee team

A hundred stories there, do a synagogue version of Armistead Maupin'sTales of the City, Tales of the Shul.

The New Search

Had a great interview for Vue magazine yesterday with Todd Vernon, CEO & Founder of Lijit, the creators of this incredible blog search engine. It's basically a new way to actually get objective search results without getting all the SEO-finagled Google results which are becoming less relevant by the day. Search as entered a new era where it's all about the filters you use to strain the search results. The thing about using blog search results is that you the real scoop on topics, not canned spam. On the flip side, Lijit gives the blogger a wealth of stats and data on their blog traffic - for free I might add. It gives you insight on how your blog is performing. Check it out...

LeVine Goes Cyber

The ubiquitous reality of the Internet  was God's personal bequest to LeVine. Oh how it simplified his life and the tangle of lies he wove. Consider his three broken engagements: Lori Kravitz called it off when she found out that he never was a silent partner in JFK Jr.'s, George magazine. Ruthie Yuck dumped him unceremoniously in The Four Season's parking lot the night before their planned wedding, when she discovered that the closest LeVine had been to earning a PhD at Oxford, was taking a pee the cafeteria during a tour. And Felice Fishbein threw his two carat ring back in his face when she found out from her father, a prominent lobbyist in Ottawa,  that not only did LeVine never tell Paul Martin, the Minister of Finance to, "go fuck off," but that LeVine had never even been to Ottawa. No matter how good the story, the women eventually exposed him.


But on the Internet he was free. A master of the chat-room, LeVine soon became a player. His success was all over North America and wisely never tread the territory of his home town. He scored in every city that had a major league baseball team, in most NFL cities and had a 70% coverage rate in the NHL. LeVine was a cyber-stud leaving only an IP address behind. 

Mendy Invades

LeVine cringed, his muscles involuntarily contracted as Mendy, the cloying  pimpled rabbi on the make for his own congregation, sat next to him in the back of the synagogue. He forced a welcoming smile at the while his stomach turned. The young zealot did not get the message, he would not leave LeVine alone. Reel the moneyman in and get the new congregation started, although LeVine wanted no part of it.

Mendy just did not get it. LeVine went to synagogue to lose himself among the minions of leftovers. It was the only time where LeVine could be off, where he didn't want to work a crowd for new investors or to pump up his public profile. Sitting there among the sea of disaffected, LeVine could let himself drift among the the chanting, the prayers, the sermons, the din of old farts complaining. No one to impress, no one to court, no elaborate stories to fabricate.

"Good shabbos, Shlumi," which meant that LeVine now had to shake Mendy's pimple-popping hand while trying not to gag. Shlumi, he says, crossing the border of familiarity, yiddishicizing his name as if they were back in the shtetl.

"Good shabbos, Rabbi Mendy," LeVine mutters while wiping his hand against his pants. "Lots of snow today," he says deliberately limited any conversation to the broadest terms.

"Should make for some fantastic skiing  tomorrow."

Strange thing for a rabbi to say, LeVine thought.

"You mean you ski?" LeVine tried to imagine the black hatter on skis, but drew a blank.

Mendy rubbed his chin of scraggy hairs that looked more like a patch of armpit hair than a beard. He contemplated his response.

"Hmmm, I don't think so, not that I recall?"

Garp Goes AWOL

Hard to get back to the grindstone after an extended weekend of feasting, family and an occasional prayer. Synagogue attendance on a continual decline, like the last years of the Montreal Expos. No longer motivated to dress to the nines, who would even notice?

Did they find the cornball back-up rabbi for the parallel services from an old Seinfeld episode? Which brings me to the question: Why is everyone associated with religion  so damn corny? (My own religion that is -- although I suspect this is a universal truth. If I could quantify corny, I'd do a research study, looking for the cornball - religion correlation.)

So getting back to my long long holiday weekend...Garp, my dog goes AWOL. I walk him over to my in-laws for Friday lunch, leave him in the vestibule only to discover that my Joe Btfsplk brother-in-law didn't close the front door. (Indignantly proclaims that he never does when he visits his octogenarian parents, as if the mere thought of it never entered his vaporous mind. Of course this kind of attitude is par for the course in this topsy turvey Newhart type of world. Mental note: Name next dog Newhart.)

So after a heavy lunch where I washed down veal chops with perhaps one glass of wine too many, I had to search for Garp. Report the incident to public security, scour the neighborhood to no avail, then return to the scene of the crime to mope. While commiserating with Joe B., resigned to the fact that a fellow dog lover would find Garp for me...out from the shrubs three houses down the street, emerges my cowed chocolate Lab. I feel whole again. Sometimes there really are happy minor sub-endings.

Holy Days for Mocking

LeVine couldn't bear the High Holiday services at his synagogue, Beth Israel. Listening to the cantor chant the repetitive prayers with those sad faux-operatic melodies was painful, like scratching on a blackboard for three hours. All those prayers begging for forgiveness, extolling God's greatness rang hollow for him. LeVine resigned himself to life as a shit with no intentions of changing or repenting. The only redeeming feature that synagogue attendance held for for LeVine was the opportunity to mock fellow congregants like Sneezy, The Bag Lady and Herman Munster.

New Year's Eve 5771

Something mad about the countdown to the Jewish New Year 5771. Mad dash for last minute things like soft drinks, wine and synagogue seat tickets, then it hits you how expensive it is to be a Jew. There's also all the family stuff to get through, kind of like that Richard Ford novel surrounding a Thanksgiving homecoming kind of weekend. Lots of shpilkes. As my late great uncle Menachem used to say, "Aways plenty to worry about," and to that, I toast, l'chaim. Here's to me & family, hoping for a happy and healthy 5771.

Hitting a Brick Wall

With his substantial inheritance, One-Ball opened a karate studio. Business was a little slow at first, so he dealt a little weed on the side to pay the rent. From the get-go his drug business was thriving, the babes were biting and soon his studio was the hottest spot in Iberville. If only it wasn’t for that nagging matricide on his conscience, life was a bowl of cherries.

One-Ball was a 5th degree black belt and became famous throughout Iberville for his ability to break brick stacks with his head. He would perform this feat at all kinds of events; charity fund-raisers, festivals and even pub crawls. It was just a question of mind over matter.

It wasn't the best idea to toke the morning that One-Ball was engaged to demonstrate his famous brick-breaking stunt at an open house at the Y. And it was disconcerting to see Gurion Academy's Principal Douglas, standing the the front row among the crowd at the demonstration.

A surge of hate coursed through his veins like a brush-fire. Principal Douglas, the fat moustached prick who only flunked One-Ball for cheating on the French final, when half the class did the same. The humiliation One-Ball endured when he had to repeat a year was a de facto life sentence to be a flunker. It was too much to bear, it never went away. That stack of bricks became Principal Douglas's bushy pate.

This time when One-Ball performed his trademark feat, the bricks remained intact, but his head cracked wide open. And all the hospital surgeons and nurses couldn’t put One-Ball back together again.

The Curse of the Flunkers

Of course, maybe it was too late for reinvention, too late to leave town, too late for flunkers like Benji? He was the third one to go this year. Before Benji, it was Blitt.

Todd “One-Ball" Blitt was the coolest flunker – he didn’t have to bullshit about nameless chicks from New Jersey. His stories were really true and he scored with all the babes, even after he lost his favorite ball to a Welsh Corgi named Nipsy.

But flunking only made One-Ball more aggressive. Maybe he had to make up for the missing testosterone? One-Ball fought continuously during his repeated year at school. And he became a real danger there, when he earned his black belt in karate. It just seemed like a matter of time before something really bad would happen.

And of course, eventually something really bad did happen. One night after a Who concert, his mother caught him doing hot knives with hash in the kitchen. A heated argument ensued, tempers flared and his mother lost control. She kicked her son in his remaining ball. One-Ball went psycho, and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he accidentally...killed his mother with a savate to the head.

Plagued with guilt, he later confided to best friend Lenny Mendelssohn, who told Mikey Fink, who told LeVine née Levine, that he covered up the accidental killing of his mother by hanging her from the chandelier, leading everyone to believe that she committed suicide.

“She would’ve wanted it that way,” One-Ball hypothesized. “It would've kill her to see me rot in prison with all those fucking degenerates.”

Weekend Update

• Back finally recovered after 2 weeks of immobility.
• Medlii campaign in swing. Market test customers helping to refine offerings and presentation. Optimistic that service contracts will result.
• FDC digital financial meeting for next week scheduled. Looking forward to kicking campaign into high gear.
• Official end of summer sports season as our synagogue softball team, the Sparx, got crushed 25 - 3 in a sudden death playoff game. Fortunately my back was in no shape to play, so I spent an idyllic day at Hampstead pool with my son.
• Got in a few final pool days during wonderfully hot last week of summer. Rediscovered the joys of the public pool where kids could not be happier. Will miss those sounds of summer: the din of the pool, the song of the cicadas during the day and crickets at night.
• Idea to run with one meta theme for Vue for next year: High tech companies delivering next gen market research tools and services.
• Follow up to that idea: What better sampling of those types of companies than the Foundry Group portfolio? Do CEO interviews or get articles from group. Pitch idea to Brad Feld...who was thumbs-up on it, sending my inquiry to all those CEOs. Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit, contacts me within the hour to set up interview. (Still amazed and impressed with the hyper-prompt responses getting back from these gentlemen.)
• It's about time I get back into novel writing, just for the sake of it. Have had this idea percolating for some time: The story of a bullshit artist (but successful) financier, who's built a life networking almost to the top through shivas. I'm obsessed with the pathos of a stranger intruding into a shiva home only seeing opportunity while others mourn. Want to see where this idea will go if I write an entry a day.

This Town's Too Small

Shiva : the formal mourning period of seven days, observed as in the home of the deceased, during which friends visit and comfort the bereaved: often in the phrase sit shiva, to observe the period of shiva

So I'm liking this bloggy way to write fiction writing and vow to keep working on this story, The Shiva Visitor, the tale of an epic bull-shitter who networks his way to success by visiting shiva homes. Will try to meld, merge and recycle material from unpublished novel, A Moth in Iberville, particularly the fate of the flunkers idea. And now back to the story...

Maybe it was time again for reinvention? LeVine had more than enough money to live on for the rest of his life. Anyways, apart from a tony address and Brooks Brothers clothes, there was nothing else he wanted, only to live among the elite. And while LeVine had done a creative job flitting up there for close to twenty years now, his elaborate construct built on the tenets of fiction was teetering on the brink of collapse. He had worked Toronto as far as its population could take him. Lately there were too many close calls at shiva homes, time to move on. Cash in on an exit from his investment fund, move to New York or L.A. Settle down with a gullible bride whose family name was bronzed on plaques in museums, schools and synagogues. Maybe even time for LeVine to be Levine again?

The Tussle With Tracy

LeVine almost went to camp with Benjy Rapaport. They would've been bunkmates during their CIT years had LeVine not changed his mind a month before camp started. According to LeVine, he accepted a late but big bucks offer to teach tennis at some posh camp in Maine that you never heard of. As an added bonus, an epic group of wild chicks from New Jersey, whom LeVine claimed to have carnally sampled during a Caribbean cruise last Christmas vacation, were also going to that camp.

But LeVine also claimed to have sampled Mel Farkas's older sister, Tracy, which for him, was a fortunately a hard story to corroborate after the Farkas family moved to Israel. A year later, homesick Mel had to go and ruin it all for LeVine, by planning to spend one last summer with the boys at Camp Wonawon. Which would've meant being bunkmates with LeVine and blowing the cover about the imagined tussle with Tracy.

The Dodger

Abby Rapaport arched her penciled eyebrows in surprise.

"And wouldn't you know, our friend Sheldon Minkowitz just walked in the door."

And yet another quick-thinking moment in the life of LeVine. He licked his chapped lips and chuckled nervously. LeVine trembled, accidentally spilling his paper cup of warm diet ginger ale on his hands. But in true LeVine form, he instantaneously transformed the clumsy mishap into a serendipitous moment.

"L-let me clean this up, Mrs. Rapaport-"

"-Please call me, Abby."

"A-a-abby..."

A few flakes from LeVine's facial patch of eczema fluttered down into his cup of flat ginger ale.

"A-a-abby, I better clean up. Uh...after all these years, I don't want to shake the other Sheldon's hand with this sticky paw."

Abby laughed and while she blinked her eyes in a micro-break from the ultimate pain, LeVine shifted into dodge-mode. He faked left to the kitchen hiding behind Spivak, the three hundred and fifty pound retired chicken farmer with the dewy blue eyes... then pirouetted around Pincus the jeweler with the ironic goatee...then ducked down, fake-tying what was in fact a Brooks Brothers loafer...and finally stumbled safely into the vestibule and out the door past Epstein, the lonely smoker on the porch immersed in deep contemplation over a freshly popped pimple.

Sheldon LeVine née Levine had done it again.