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.