Real Music & Real Estate . . .

I’m popular on the klezmer scene, mostly because I run The Challah Fame (aka the Klezmer Hall of Fame). The principle of the klezmer scene being the starved-dog principle when you throw a bit of food into the pit and all the dogs leap for it with fangs out, killing each other as they leap, that is the scene. There are so few bones (gigs) that the competition turns musicians into creeps immediately, because they’re climbing over each other’s backs for scraps.

I produce concerts at The Challah Fame. These concerts are big productions, and mine to dole out.  I favor Steven Greenman, for instance, because he has a cute bulldog and lives in Cleveland.  My band, Yiddishe Cup, naturally gets heavy rotation.  I also hire Harmonia and a handful of other bands that treat me right.

I pick musicians who, first off, like the Midwest (no putdowns of Cleveland, please), who play masterfully, who do the obligatory educational workshop, and who get drunk with me after the show. I like performers who tell me who is sleeping with whom on the scene, who is getting gigs in Poland, and who is on Sapoznik’s most-favored list today.  (Sapoznik is the klez Mafia don and a co-founder of KlezKamp.)

I try to hire young klezmer musicians because I was one once.  I remember when I lived near Coventry Road with a couple of babies.  The babies’ bedroom had obscene paintings on the wall and toys strewn about.  It was a typical starving musician’s pad, and I was the boss.  I thought so.  My wife didn’t. I got up every morning at 5 a.m. and watched the speed freaks feed the pigeons at Turtle Park. I’m looking for young Challah Fame talent like that.

If you’re a fresh, new klez musician and want to be really popular — “sell out” — that’s fine with me.  I respect any player who wants to eat.  If you can wrangle a gig with Perlman, go for it.  To me, Hustler is not just an Ohio-based porn magazine, it’s a badge of honor. Circle the wagons and promote yourself.

The perks – the ones I dispense — go to musicians who respect The Challah Fame and its mission.  The Challah Fame, and the klezmer world in general, is a network, a mini-establishment.  When you mess with The Challah, you are messing not only me, but with everybody who buys into The Challah Fame, and that’s a lot of yehudim (plus three gentiles in Germany).

The Challah receives grant money from the county, state, NEA and foundations.  And a lot of individual philanthropic donations.  Enemies of The Challah are doomed,  on the outside looking in, like Pete Rose, forever.

I won’t print my enemies’ names.  So many people detest me, and they would love recognition – any recognition.

On second thought, haters, sign in here.  I  need to update my data base:__________, ___________, ___________, ___________, _____________, _____________.

Friends?  I have a few.  Wex, he’s très kosher. If you don’t know Wex, pick up a copy of the Klezmer News today at your newsstand and read up, man!  Wex is the poet laureate of klezmer.  He talked to me back when I was nobody,  before The Challah opened. I still enjoy getting drunk with Wex.

I like Byron too.  Lord Don Byron.  Thanks, Don, we’re  tired of just klez cats (kitties) on FB.

Rubin — tubist Rubin — is also on my A team, even though he once called Yiddishe Cup “crap,” or words to that effect.  Yiddishe Cup is a middle-brow schmaltz peddler, Rubin said.  I’m open to criticism if it’s that outrageous.

My scene, it is so different from the other klezmer scenes. My scene is compassionate and fun.

Heymish?  Nah.

Real?

Very.

—

The first paragraph of this post is a 95-percent ripoff of a Tom Clark rant on the poetry scene from Little Caesar #11 magazine, 1980.   Seventeen-percent of the rest of the post is a ripoff as well.  Thanks to Charlie Burch for the Little Caesar article.

File “My Scene” under KlezFiction. The complete KlezFiction series is here.

Some thieves specialize in quarters. They pry open coin boxes on washing machines and dryers in laundry rooms.

Quarter stealers did this a couple times at one of my apartment buildings. One time the building manager ran into them, took their picture, and asked them who they were. They said they were Sarah and Michael.

Afterward, the building manager handed the photo over to the police. Sarah and Michael were then videoed pouring quarters into a coin-sorting machine at a nearby grocery store.

Sarah and Michael hit 21 buildings on the West Side, the cops told me.

About a month later,  I got a letter from the county prosecutor about Paul and Erin — the crooks’ real names.  They were charged with burglary, possessing criminal tools, aggravated theft, theft, tampering with coin machines and vandalism.  The thieves wound up in prison.

My damages: $884.50.

That’s a lot of quarters. (For the record: 3,538.)
–

SIDE B

Not another fake profile! (The complete fake-profile series is here.)

THE BOXER

I’m a boxer. That’s the essence of who I am.

I’m not a heavyweight so you probably don’t know me. I grew up boxing. I listened to Johansson-Patterson fights on the radio. Also, Patterson versus Clay. I boxed at the Ukrainian Club, AAU and Junior Golden Gloves.

My parents were all for it. My father encouraged boxing. In my dad’s day, Jewish fighters frequently hit the top: Jackie Davis, Benny Leonard. Locally, Harry Levine was a good light heavyweight. Levine fought with his face out front. If it got hit, his head would shake like a bobblehead. He kept hitting though.

My last sanctioned fight was in 1968 against Johnny Montello. We were from the same neighborhood. The bout was old-school, Italian versus Jew. It was a 1930s ethnic turf battle but in the 1960s! Johnny was just back from ’Nam. He had been a cook over there. He was punchy (foggy-headed). He had boxed too much in the Army.

Johnny got into my face verbally, like Ali, saying: “You’re always talking about Jewish shit.” Johnny pointed at the Star of David on my trunks.

I said, “You should know one thing about me: being Jewish is who I am. Everything I do is a part of that.” I was a college student back then. Up at Michigan, I boxed in Waterman Gym — with myself. Existential stuff.

My buddies attended the Montello fight. My friends were hippies. Montello’s friends were extras from Grease.

Montello broke my nose and gave me a concussion. After that, I promised my parents I would quit boxing. My dad, finally, thought it was a good idea and got me private tennis lessons. Tennis was like boxing, he said, but without hitting. Agassi’s dad — a boxer — said the same thing.

I miss the ring. I play tennis, but I miss the ring. I think about boxing a lot: Babe Triscaro, Jimmy Bivins, Tony Mulia.

I would like another chance. The Senior Olympics has pickleball but no boxing. What’s pickleball?

–
An op-ed, by yo, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Friday (11/29).  The print headline was “Klezmer Christmas?  He’s actually in favor of goodwill to men.” The online headline was “Dreaming of a Green Christmas.”

This is KlezFiction.  The complete KlezFiction series is here.

These 13 health tips are from my new e-book, The Klezmer Guy Tune Up, (which makes a great Chanukah gift!)

1. Eat your fist at least once a week.

2. Sing the beginning of “The Star-Spangled Banner” every morning.  It’s a major triad, 5-3-1.  It’ll align you.

3. Prick yourself.  If your blood isn’t bright red, immediately eat potato chips.  Any brand.  For the salt.

4. Therapy is always worth it, but don’t pay more than $150/hour.

5. Eat sardines once a week.  Lightly smoked Chicken of the Sea, in oil, is your best bet.

6. You need a gum graft. Get it now!

7. Drink olive oil in a shot glass daily.

8. Don’t knock Miller Lite. It does the job.

9. Visit a pawn shop today and buy a power tool. Get outside your bubble!

10. [For Catholics only: carry a smartphone at all times.  Sainthood is hard to prove if you don’t have good documentation.]

11. Eat a marshmallow with your dark chocolate. This helps your stomach absorb the flavenoids.

12. Gamble.  It fine-tunes the nervous system.  Try craps first.

13. Use Arby’s Horsy Sauce on all your salads, fish and fries.   It’s better for you than even tomato sauce.

—

There is no Klezmer Guy Tune-up book.  Like I said, this is  KlezFiction.

A college kid told my band’s guitarist he went to Columbia University, and my guy said, “Where’s that?”

That knocked the college boy back a few SAT points.

College quiz question: What college narrowly missed being in the original Ivy League football conference?

Answer: Colgate University.*

Another fact: Yiddishe Cup once shared the bill with the Colgate glee club at a Cleveland wedding.

More: Former MIT folk dancers are a solid market for Yiddishe Cup.  Yiddishe Cup has played several simchas for MIT folk dancers.

Regionally speaking, I was loyal to Ohio State for many years.  My dad took me to Ohio State homecoming games every year.  My father lived in a corner of Ohio Stadium, in the scholarship dorm, the Tower Club, which was actually a barracks with cots. My dad often said some of the gentiles at Ohio State, back in the 1930s, thought Jews had horns.

A New Jersey woman — a potential bar mitzvah customer — called me and said, “I went to Ohio U. in the 1980s.  All the kids from Mentor and Madison [Ohio] thought I had horns.”

The Buckeye marching band had horns.  (Horns and percussion. No clarinets.)

The only time my father yelled at a TV was when Ohio State played Cincinnati for the 1961 basketball championship.  Who won?  [Cincinnati, 70-65.]

I attended a college-rejection shiva. The shiva — at Corky & Lenny’s restaurant in April 1968 — was for a friend who was rejected by every college he applied to. He got in nowhere!  He was ranked fifth, or so, in our high school class, but every college turned him down because the high school guidance counselor didn’t like him and wrote a negative recommendation.  (He was way too political for my school.)

We sat in the corner booth at C&Ls and drank chocolate phosphates, commiserating with our friend.  We were all in somewhere, and he wasn’t.

He eventually got accepted to Ohio State on a late application. Back then, if you had a heartbeat you could get into OSU.  He wound up in an OSU high-rise dorm with 16 guys per suite.  It wasn’t anything like the house system at Harvard.

***

I knew a college counselor at University School, a private boys’ school in Cleveland.  If the counselor put in a good word for you, you were in.  Harvard, Yale, you name it.  Harvey Mudd. Deep Springs.

The counselor didn’t believe his own myth.  Go to a school that was a “good fit,” he  said.  (“Good fit” was the watchword of  college counselors.)  This counselor went to Harvard, a “good fit” for a college counselor.

Here’s a tip for high school kids: on your application, focus on something esoteric.  Write:  “I want to be a klezmer musician because it is the cornerstone of my existence.”  Describe a setback you have faced. “My parents don’t like klezmer music. They are so wrong.  I’ve been thinking about klezmer my whole life.”

No guarantees, but give it a try.

–

*The statement about Colgate narrowly missing out on the Ivy League football conference may be apocryphal.

–

OSU Tower Club residents, 1937.  Click on the photo to make it bigger.  “Tower  Club,” a sign,  is on the stadium entrance to the left of “Toby.”)

The downtown jail has narrow windows.  The jail, from the outside, doesn’t  even look like a jail. It looks like an office building with narrow windows.

Across the street, on West 3rd Street, is a law office with a sign in the window: “Inmates, call collect.”

I was at the county board of revision nearby, trying to get my property taxes lowered.

I liked the downtown government scene. When I was young, I drifted in and out of trials at the Justice Center for fun.  I liked the crying and screaming, and the lawyers picking on each other. (This was before cable and reality TV.).

I would like to be a county prosecutor someday and put away bad guys, but I don’t want to go to law school.

I once sneaked into the jury assembly room to get a list of jurors’ names for a trial.  (I was a reporter.)  I got in some trouble with the authorities and my editor.

Now I spend my time far away from the Justice Center. I miss the action down there.

Inmates, call me collect. Not a good use of your one call, but I’d like to hear from you.

—

Yiddishe Cup is at Klezmerpalooza  7:30 Sat. (Nov. 16) at The Temple, Beachwood, Ohio. 

I lost my Brooks running hat.  I owned two.  I lost them both.  I bought them at a running store in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I don’t usually lose things, except hats.  (I’m excellent with gloves.)

I went to Dick’s in Cleveland for a replacement hat and bought an Adidas. It constricted my head.  I got minor headaches from the Adidas.  (Granted, I didn’t give my head much time to adjust.)

Amazon, I tried that too.  Nothing appropriate.  I wanted a long-bill white cap with not much writing on it.  eBay had four such “old school” Brooks Infiniti running caps — just like my lost caps.  (Not like the trashy Brooks hats of today, with a lot of writing.)

Thank you, eBay! I bought all four caps. That’s excessive I know.  But only if I die soon. (Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman, has 10 pair of black jeans.  Steve Jobs had at least 50 black turtleneck shirts.)

I went back to eBay a couple days later, just to cruise, to see how the world of caps was holding up.  There were no “old school” Brooks hats left.   I had cornered the market!

My Brooks hats arrived from Mississippi. Then my wife found my lost cap, which was in the kitchen in a basket.  Somebody had put it there.  Not me.

Now I have five “old school” Brooks Infiniti caps.  Even better.

—
Check out Klezmerpalooza here.  Yiddishe Cup plays Sat.  Nov. 16 evening, Cleveland.

This is a fake profile. The complete fake-profiles series is here.

Danny Kaye watched surgery for a hobby.  He hung around doctors and operating rooms.

My parents admired Danny Kaye; he could dance, sing, and do impersonations, plus the medical stuff.

My parents wanted me to be Danny Kaye — the medical part.

Instead, I majored in history and became a journalist.  I wrote a 4,000-word article on open-heart surgery. I also did a story on polio.  I watched some surgery.

I tried surgery.  My patient –- call her Karen — took two years to recover, and I suffered financial and legal complications.  I never expected to make money from operating on her but I didn’t think I would go broke, which I did.  A lawyer called me a “kidnapper,” as if I had purposefully kept Karen captive for eight hours. (The surgery was only seven hours, schmuck!)

Post-op, I told Karen, “The good news is you’re alive and your aortas — two of them – are 90-percent clear.  I used pipe cleaner.  The bad news is the other aortas are controversial.  Any sudden outburst by you now, and you might die.”

Karen screamed but didn’t die.  She sued me.

Danny Kaye hosted Herman’s Hermits on his TV show in 1965, to encourage  youngsters to watch. Danny’s older viewers preferred Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabrey and Jim Nabors.

Kaye experimented.  He took chances.  So did I.

I have mixed feelings about Kaye, to this day.  My parents liked him more than me. I performed my operation on Karen so I wouldn’t have to endure more snide remarks from my parents, like “Son, you write for a suburban weekly. That’s not a living.”

Walk in my shoes. The cold rejection of my parents.  I took a knife to a young woman’s heart.

I’m good at surgery.  I’m not Cleveland Clinic quality but I’m good.

I’m as good as Danny Kaye.

—

Carlo Wolff wrote an in-depth, real profile of Ralph Solonitz, this blog’s illustrator. Click here to read it. (Cleveland Jewish News, 10/25/13.)  By the way, the drawing above is a pen atop a gurney.
—
Yiddishe Cup is at KlezmerPalooza at The Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, 7:30 p.m. Sat., Nov. 16. $20, or $15 if you buy by Nov. 9. Call 216-831-3233. Free dessert, beer and wine.

Stan Herschfield paced his apartment at 3 a.m., waking up the tenants below.  I asked Herschfield to ease up, and  he said, “What do you want from me?  I can’t fly.”

He moved out shortly after that.

About 10 years later, he called. “Stratton, you remember me — Herschfield.  I want to move back in.”

“Herschfield!” I said, emoting like I was in a bad JCC play. “You painted the floor.  You complained about the deaf guy across the hall blasting organ music.  You complained about the people below you fornicating. You skipped out on your final month’s rent.  It cost me fifty dollars to clean the place.  But you did teach me some good Yiddish words.”

“I didn’t skip!  Those yentzers below, they drove me out!”

“You painted the kitchen floor.”

“Stratton, I used Benjamin Moore.  Only the best!”

I didn’t let him back.

Maybe Herschfield didn’t say yentzers.  Maybe he said shtuppers.  I only caught a fraction of his Yiddish.  He talked so fast.

I’ve had a couple former tenants move back in.  Usually not into the same suite, but often into the same building.

I save old records on tenants.  F. Scott Fitzgerald said bookkeeping is not a sexy subject, but it is moderately interesting.  I wish I hadn’t thrown out my dad’s tax returns; they would make fascinating reading now I’m older and into nuance.

I keep dossiers on ex-tenants.  Nothing personal, no nude posture photos like those Ivy League colleges did.  Just notes on whether the tenant paid his final month’s rent, turned in his keys and didn’t trash the place.  If all’s well, I’ll let him back.  Could be a decade later.

The good tenants, you don’t remember.  You have to look them up.

—
This post was a vid first,  4/5/12. Features Alan Douglass singing “Dear Landlord.”
—
Yiddishe Cup is at KlezmerPalooza at The Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, 7:30 p.m. Sat., Nov. 16.  $20, or $15 if you buy by Nov. 9.  Call 216-831-3233.  Free dessert, beer and wine.
—
A new vid, “You wouldn’t believe the derelicts . . . “   Forty-five seconds of  real estate talk:

This is KlezFiction. The complete KlezFiction series is here.

Why is the Klezmer Hall of Fame — aka The Challah Fame — in Cleveland? Here’s why: Do you remember Bob Malaga, the lawyer who brought the Davis Cup to Cleveland in 1964?  Bob Malaga — aka Mr. Tennis — pulled off that Forest Hills-to-Cleveland heist almost single-handedly.

The Challah Fame story is a similar saga, but about another Cleveland monomaniac: Klezmer Guy, aka Mr. Guy.

Mr. Guy wrote record reviews for his college paper, the Michigan Daily, about Muddy Waters, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mott the Hoople, and The Up.  He also wrote about Buddy Guy (no relation).  Mr. Guy had insights. For instance, he disliked Detroit rock and roll because it was simplistic and too loud. Guy lambasted John Lennon’s “Free John Sinclair” concert at the Michigan basketball arena in 1971.  Face it, Allen Ginsberg’s harmonium was not music.

John Sinclair and his friends at the White Panther Party were not happy with Guy’s review. Those potheads were fuming. What did they want?

Not the truth.

Guy left Ann Arbor in a hurry, returning to his hometown, Cleveland, to open a nightclub.  Cleveland was perfectly situated on the nightclub circuit, halfway between Chicago and New York.  Guy booked quality acts into his club, which he operated out of the basement of a shul on Taylor Road. Guy told the temple gadolim (big shots) he was running a Jewish music coffeehouse, and they were ecstatic.  The rent was free.

Guy rocked the gatkes (underwear) off the shul — Taylor Road Synagogue (TRS) — which was empty even back then.  The shul let Guy use the main sanctuary too.  “Use the sanctuary but keep it Jewish!” the TRS president said.

Guy booked the Electric Prunes, Steve Miller and Quicksilver.  All Jewish acts, according to Guy. Underground radio DJs bellowed, “Go see Steve Miller tonight at TRS!”

TRS’ sanctuary was packed.  So Guy said to himself, “I’m in a shul.  I’m making money.  Why not go for some authentic Jewish music?”  Guy locked onto klezmer.  Dave Tarras  sold out TRS, as did Mickey Katz.

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened, Guy rode the Rock Hall’s PR coattails and opened The Challah Fame.

Tarras statue (L) w/ a Challah Fame maintenance man

Guy displayed his personal memorabilia: a Corky & Lenny’s T-shirt, Park Synagogue refrigerator magnet and a saxophone reed signed by Hankus Netsky of the Klezmer Conservatory Band — “Love ya!  Hankus.”  Guy also had a flyer from Lethbridge, Alberta, 1966: Beatnik Coffeehouse Tonight / Tim Hortons / Michael Wex.  Guy had violinist Steven Greenman’s fourth grade report card (redacted).

Are you interested in this stuff?

Apparently you are.  You’ve read this far.

The Challah Fame keeps irregular hours. Please call ahead.

My son Jack played his first professional gig with Yiddishe Cup at age 8, when I gave him five dollars to play “Wipe Out.” We were at a temple Chanukah party.  Before that gig, he had done pro bono work, sitting in frequently with the band and stealing the show. The senior citizens loved him.

Jack, age 4, 1992, Beachwood library, tambourines and drumsticks.

Years later, Shirley Guralnik, a fan of the band, would ask me, “How’s the little one?” And I would answer, “The little one is in college now and bigger than me.” Shirley died in 2011. She had followed  Jack’s career from the beginning.

Jack never got nervous.  A case of nerves was hard to develop if, like Groucho Marx, your stage-mom (or dad, in this case) put you on stage practically in diapers.

I told Jack I would pay him $75 — real money — for a real gig after his bar mitzvah.  He would be Yiddishe Cup’s drummer for some gigs. He wouldn’t just sit in.

He did great.

Jack got uptight only once.  It was at his own bar mitzvah — not the music, reading Torah.  The rabbi asked him, “How nervous are you on a scale of 1 to 10.”

“Eight.”

“That’s not bad,” the rabbi said.

Jack said, “I’ve never been an 8 before!”

***

Jack, 13, 2000, at his first "real money" gig

Jack’s $75 gig was at the Barrington Golf Club in Aurora, Ohio.  A country club staffer asked if she should light the Christmas tree for the bar mitzvah luncheon.  I said,  “Not a good idea.”

On the way home, we stopped by my dad’s grave on Aurora Road.   I told Jack to place an old clarinet reed on the grave marker.

My point? 1) I didn’t have any old drumsticks. 2) I was at my father’s grave with my youngest kid, who I had just paid to work, just like my father had paid me (to paint walls, argh). The cracked reed fit into the Jewish star on the grave marker.

My son got the $75.

Jack’s band, Vulfpeck, 2013. Jack on keys.

(Today I am a man)  X 2  =  Age 26, 2013

“Anything within 10 feet of the cup, Toby sank,” said Hy Birnbaum, a friend of my late father.

I saw Hy at the drugstore, where he worked part-time as a pharmacist.  He was about 85 at the time. Hy said all his friends were dead.  (My dad, Toby, had been dead about 25 years.)

I ran into John Kelly, who worked with my dad 30-some years ago at the key company.  John said one of the “big bosses’” had slept overnight in the key-company office because he had marital problems. This big boss, Sid, had a slew of problems.  His kids were “real hippies,” said John. Sid was a loud-mouth, know-it-all, country-club Jew from Shaker Heights, I remember my dad saying. Toby liked to kvetch about Sid almost nightly at dinnertime.

My dad disliked most “big bosses.” Who didn’t. One “big boss” my dad tolerated, luckily, was the key company president, Manny Schor, who was a World Federalist, very intelligent and not a show off.

Manny came to my gigs occasionally in later years.  (Most of the big bosses at the key company were Jewish.  The company was owned by a Jew.) Manny said, “I can still picture your father sitting at his desk.”

So could I.

Why were these old guys still alive and my dad dead?  That’s what I  wanted to know. My dad’s long game wasn’t so great.

—-

Where are they now:
Toby Stratton  1917 – 1986
Sid  1921 – 2000
Manny Schor  1918 – 2009
John Kelly  1931 – 2011
Hy Birnbaum  1925 -

1.

Yiddishe Cup has shared the stage with the Hungarian Scouts, Ukrainian Kashtan dancers, and Csardas, a Hungarian troupe. These groups draw fans to local festivals, and the dancers perform in difficult odd meters. Yiddishe Cup doesn’t draw many fans to these multicultural shows. The typical Jew doesn’t want to watch Ukrainians, Poles, or Hungarians dance.

At one festival, some of the folk dances had sappy English titles, like “My Little Cherry Tree” and “I Love You, Shepherd Boy.” I took the printed program home and looked up the real titles:

“Tylko We Lwowie” (Let’s Get Out of Lviv)

“Frogisic Sie Pani” (My Bagpipes are Soggy)

“Jaz Pa Ti” (Dad is Tipsy)

“Pytala Sie Pani” (Pierogis With Butter, Senator)

“Llactosi Nyasa Pilsenioya” (I Hate Milk and Like Beer)

“Jak Szybko Hund Chwile” (Jacko’s Chili Dog Is Outstanding)

“Nasza Jest, Noc Tylko” (Not Tonight, Not Tomorrow.)

2.

I bought a raffle ticket for the St. Mary’s Church (Collinwood) fundraiser, Catholic Order of Foresters, Court #1640.

I bought the ticket from Stan. Stan’s father was Stan too.   Stan — my friend  Stan – got married at St. William’s Church, not St. Stan’s.  (St. Stan’s church is  Polish.  Stan is Slovenian.)

Stan’s wedding reception was at the big Slovenian National Home on  St. Clair Avenue at E. 65th Street. Stan hired his uncle’s polka band.  At the  wedding, we danced Slovenian-style polka — not the same as Polish-style polka.  (If you don’t know the difference, please see Harvey Pekar’s “Polka Wars” American Splendor, issue #16.)

Yiddishe Cup can play Slovenian! We’ve done Yankovic’s “Just Because” and “Blue Skirt Waltz,” and some charts from polka musician Joey Tomsick.

I won $20 in the St. Mary’s raffle.  I haven’t seen the money yet.

Slovenians are tight with a buck.  That’s their in-group reputation. Amongst themselves, Slovenians brag about their frugality, and they like to trash Lithuanians, who are even tighter.  Stan told me all this.

The St. Mary’s Church raffle was three years ago.  Stan, you owe me $23 — that’s $20 plus interest.   Pay up, Stan.  Any Stan.

This is a fake profile . The complete fake-profiles series is here.

My mother collects rents.  She tracks down delinquent tenants every third of the month.  She’s a bit forgetful — she misplaces checks — but she still makes the rounds, chasing tenants.  She’s 80 and owns 38 units on the East Side of Cleveland.

She wants me to do the collecting. I don’t want to.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t want to dun 22 year olds for their rent.  I prefer to be at work; I’m a lawyer, and have been for 29 years.

I have manilla folders with notes from my mom.  She collects legal clauses like some old ladies collect Hummels. I once tried to streamline her five-page lease but she wouldn’t let me. She instructs her tenants to use a string mop.  That’s in the lease! Why?  What 22 year old even owns a mop?

My mother hides apartment keys everywhere, and says to me, “Now this key is to that room, which is next to this door. Turn right, and reach your hand around the corner and it’s on this ledge.”

I have to write all that down. My sister is in Texas. It’s all on me.

I ran into Bert Stratton, the real estate blogger, the other day.  His klezmer band really should hang it up.  How long have they been around?  Pass the torch (Havdalah candle), Bert!  Bert always asks me the same thing: “What are you going to do when your mother dies?”

I don’t want to collect rents and fix leaky toilets, Bert, understand?

Bert says he understands that, but then mentions the real estate gig is, if nothing else, parnassah.  Bert likes to sling Yiddish.  Sling this, Bert: Va fangool!  (Parnassah means livelihood in Yiddish.)

I’ve got a livelihood!  I’m 54 with a successful law practice.

Stratton: “Really, what are you going to do when your mother dies?”

“Call you, Bert.”

That shuts him up.

No disrespect to anybody.

—

For more on the landlord biz, check out my interview on NPR yesterday, from the show The Story.  I got my 15 minutes.  No, 20 minutes.  It’s long, yet amusing.

Re: my interview on NPR’s The Story today  (9/17/13)

Welcome, National Public Radio (The Story) listeners.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the RIGHT and click “subscribe.”   You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.  The essay, The Landlord’s Tale, is the best thing I’ve ever written.

See you here every Wednesday, or else!   (Subscribe.)

Here’s a pic of my father:

Toby Stratton, age 50, 1967

Think ethnic

Yiddishe Cup was nominated for the “best ethnic/world band.”  We were practically the only non-Afro/ non-reggae/ non-Caribbean/ non-Zydeco band in the contest.

With one email blast to our fan base, Yiddishe Cup would have won the Cleveland Music Award.

Sorry. Not our scene, Scene.   (Cleveland Scene magazine sponsored the contest.)  We did not want to email blast our Yiddishe Cup fans. We didn’t want to disturb world Jewry.

I think the judges – Scene editors — designed the ballot so we would win.  Their theory:  Young voters would spread their votes among the Afro bands, and Yiddishe Cup would pick up the rock-solid Jewish block.

Do you think the other bands held back on email blasts?  No! They sent out hundreds of emails: “Vote for us!” . . . “Make us number one!” . . . “We’re number one!”

Pathetic.

The winner was Mifune, an Afrobeat hip-hop band.   Mifune — you can’t even pronounce that.  At least you can pronounce Yiddishe Cup (if you’re Jewish).

The most-recent music awards contest was in 2010.  Nothing since.*

Scene, please reboot. Yiddishe Cup wants to be number one.  We’re ready to rock and e-blast now.   Free Cleveland coconut bars to everybody who votes for Yiddishe Cup!

*News flash: Scene just held another music awards contest (September 2013).  There was no “ethnic/world” category.  Foul ball!

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The photo at top is Daniel Ducoff (L) and Alan Douglass of Yiddishe Cup.  Their hats are Mongolian.
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SIDE B

CENTIPEDE LANDLORD

I was the landlord in a panel discussion, sponsored by the Cleveland Tenants Organization and the Center for Families and Children

I wore a sports coat and polo shirt.  I looked good.

One problem: there was no audience, to speak of (to). Only two people.  One had an apartment full of centipedes.  She had put her money in escrow for several months, and the landlord hadn’t gotten rid of the centipedes.  She said, “I don’t mind a bug or two, but I don’t like them crawling on my ceiling, and me, when I’m sleeping.”

She also said there were grain moths when she moved in. She said the city inspector came out and said, “Where do you shop?” Which she considered a veiled racial remark.  “Like he thought I shopped in the ghetto.  I shop where everybody else shops!”

The woman’s landlord should have gotten rid of the centipedes. I would have liked to have heard from the landlord.

The other person at the presentation had been booted out of her apartment. Her common-law husband had kicked her out.  She had two kids and lived on $400/month.

Mr. Polo Shirt – me — had nothing to say.  Come move in with me?  Nope.

Lead paint. That’s boring. The meeting ended on that note.

Centipede eats lead and dies

I feel bad for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The PD is understaffed and demoralized. But I feel worse for myself. I want my local news, in print, on the breakfast table every morning.  (The paper is now home-delivered only four days a week.)

Yes, I’ve heard of the Internet and iPads.  I’m not going that way with my papes!

When John Gilligan, an ex-Ohio governor, died, I read about it two days late. That’s not right; I should have gotten that news sooner.

I’m signing up for Pony Express.

The Wall Street Journal stopped coming to my house the same day the Plain Dealer died (August 5).  All newspaper home-delivery got screwed up. A neighbor — nine houses away — still received the Wall Street Journal. I took hers. She didn’t need it!  (She has a different delivery guy, apparently.)

My cousin George, a big sports fan, is in a newspaper funk too, because he can’t read the Plain Dealer sports pages daily with his morning coffee.

Everybody over 50, please repeat with me: “Screw Newhouse!” (Newhouse owns the PD.)

My son Ted delivered the Sun Press, a weekly.  I was his sub.  My dad delivered the Cleveland News.  My grandfather delivered the Vilna Bugle (Shofar), maybe. My dad wouldn’t allow me to be a paperboy.  He wanted me to enjoy life more than he did.

I enjoy papes. Where are my papes?

—
SIDE B

This is a fake profile. The complete fake-profiles series is here.

WHATEVER IT TAKES

I’ve played Perchik and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Sometimes I get calls from small-town theater troupes to discuss Jewish stuff, like Fiddler. They ask about yarmulkes and the breaking of the glass, and chair lifting.

I make up stuff. I’ve been to enough Jewish weddings to know the rabbis make up stuff too — particularly about the glass breaking. There are many reasons why the glass is broken. All bobe mayses (old wives’ tales).

When I’m not acting, I do a one-man variety show. I play a little guitar, hand drum, even harmonica, and I sing. I know some Yiddish. I use backing tracks.

Here’s a promo pic from my glory days. I use it sparingly, now that I’m 59 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I should advertise in the back of Hadassah mag like Ruth Kaye and Caryn Bark. Who are they?

Who am I? I hear you.  I live in Jersey and play the nursing home circuit in the tri-state region. And I work Florida in the winters.

I’ve played Tevye three times. I’ve also played the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar at summer stock in Ohio.

Whatever it takes.

L’shanah tova. (Happy New Year.)

I had two hot water tanks go out in the same building on the same day,  a Friday afternoon.

Four guys can carry in a 92-gallon commercial hot water tank .  And I can pay $5,400 for their fun.

No plumbers were around.  They were all preparing their boats for Lake Erie weekend-cruising.

I reached Stack Heating.   Stack said he didn’t do commercial hot-water tanks.  Just boilers. I reached Royal Flush.  They said they couldn’t get it until Tuesday.  Dale at Madison Plumbing could do it Monday.  Pompeii said never. B & B Hot Water Tank said no thanks.

I started flipping through the Yellow Pages.  That is the end of the world.

I braced myself for calls, like “Mr. Landlord,  there is no hot water.  How am I supposed to go to work without showering? ” . . . “I have to stay at my parents’ house and it’s 60 miles from work . . . ”

It’s not pleasant, these scenes.

I  got Bill the plumber.  He came by and blow-torched the old tanks to dry them.  (The tanks had flooded because a sump pump had failed.)   The plumber gave the first tank a 50-50 chance of recovery.  The second tank had 40 percent chance, he said.  I liked his odds.

The first tank went on after six hours of pampering. We were good.

Still, it was no picnic.

 . . . Dear Landlord,  I have  deducted $275 from my rent payment because I  stayed in a hotel for three days due to the lack of hot water.

Didn’t happen!

—
SIDE B

In honor of the mildest summer ever . . .

WICKIN’ COOL

I threw out my dad’s wife-beater T-shirts. About time. My father died 27 years ago. The wife-beaters were balled up in my dresser drawer.

When it’s 90-plus degrees — which it isn’t often this summer — I think “wife-beaters.” I used to wear my dad’s wife-beaters around the house.

My wife bought me a wicking T-shirt with UV protection at Target. Only $11. It was cooler than the wife-beater.

I saved one of my father’s T-shirts for posterity and threw the rest out.

Underwear fashion is generational. My grown sons aren’t interested in my wife-beaters. My dad wore his wife-beaters under dress shirts for work, for his day job at the key company.

I’m going to buy a couple more ultra-light wicking T-shirts.

No doubt, my sons will pitch my ultra-lights when I’m either dead or not looking. By 2025, T-shirts will be spray-on from a can.

Meanwhile, I’m wickin’ cool.

–
A version of  “Wickin’ Cool” was on CoolCleveland.com 7/12/12.

This is a fake profile.  The complete fake-profile collection is here.

1. 
I wrote several unpublished novels in college.  My best was about a married couple with a kid who died from SIDS. I sent the manuscript around. An editor at Doubleday liked it.  She wrote, “We need you to change it to a woman narrator.”

Yes!

My agent — suddenly everybody wanted to be my agent — told me, “If you don’t want to change the narrator’s sex, don’t. I can sell it as is.”

Better yet.

My agent shopped the manuscript around and I got plenty compliments — “evocative” came up often.  Two years’ worth of “evocatives.”

In the end, nothing. It was heartbreaking. I should have rewritten the book.

I did.  Two year later I sent the revised version to Doubleday. The editor was long gone.

How many novelists came out of Kent State? (I graduated in 1982.)  I had no Ivy League friends; I knew absolutely nobody in publishing.

And I kept writing. You may remember my first book, Bodegas and Bagels.  It was a trade paperback about the Americanization of the bagel.  It came out in 1997.

Lately I’ve been kind of dry. I write the occasional poem and blog post.  I have a following among academic Jews — professors who teach Jewish studies.  In 2009 I wrote Maimonides, My Main Man. Check it out. It’s self-helpy. I feel certain it would make gratifying entertainment for millions of readers, not just Jewish readers.  The Jewish Review of Books gave it five dreidels.

Right now I’m working on a novel, Gads!, set in an era of apocalyptic war and famine. My friends describe it as riveting.  New York isn’t so riveted.

I might do an e-book.  Maybe a 3-D book.

An astrologer did my chart four times, and every time I came up “optimist.” I want to be the commencement speaker at Kent State.

But first I have to finish Gads! Maybe I should delete the arcane Jewish references.  For starters, cut all references to baba ganoush. There’s this character, a Jewish studies prof, who subsists solely on baba during the famine.

I’ll work it out.

2.
I work at an ad agency. I got into that after the University of Akron, where I was an adjunct writing professor, going nowhere. My ad agency is 80 years old and has 124 employees.  I’ve never seen Mad Men. Don’t need to.

I worked on the Hot Pockets campaign. I did Snickerdoodles.  I did Crown condoms — very big in Japan. Now I’m working on a project for Ovaltine. Moms send in quotes from their kids.  The quotes are memes — cute things kid say.  Long live Art Linkletter! The 20- and 30-somethings at my agency don’t know from Art.

We have ping pong tables, pool tables, three pinball machines — all the usual stuff — at work.  Dogs, yes. About 15 of them.  The kids bring their dogs to work.

I’m working on health-indicator jewelry. The jewelry turns colors depending on your blood pressure.  Remember mood rings?  The kids don’t!

My agency is at I-271 and Emery Road, Cleveland. You don’t have to go to New York or Chicago.

3.
I work the alphabet hard.  I work it hard every single day. After work I write my novel. My favorite letters tonight are K and L, like in “Glock.”

I’m the bard. Let’s leave it at that. One problem: everybody thinks they can write, so everybody is quick to judge. The “creatives” – that’s an advertising term for the boys by the ping pong table — aren’t that creative.  Neither am I right now. This evening I wrote “I Smoke my Own Lox.” The poem sucks, I know that. I’ll try again.

Tomorrow I’m going to work with Fs and Us. Got any ideas?  I’m going to be the commencement speaker at Kent State — and not in 2025!
—

My op-ed  “My Job Isn’t So Bad” was in the New York Times  Saturday (8/17/13). The story was about the family biz. I wrote in part about a ratty apartment.  Here’s a classic dirty apt. pic:

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SIDE B

in memory of Elmore Leonard (1925-2013)

THE LODGE

My wife, Alice, and I were in Detroit.

Alice said, “Detroit has very long roads.”

What’s that mean, Alice?

“Woodward, Gratiot and Telegraph.”

Detroit also has the Lodge. Elmore Leonard mentioned the Lodge in his books, like, “The gambling casino, Mutt, you can’t fucking miss it, over by the Lodge freeway.”

A couple Cleveland freeways and bridges have names.  The Hope Memorial Bridge, the Willow Freeway.  But nobody ever uses the names.

Who was John C. Lodge? Probably a labor leader. [No, the mayor of Detroit in the 1920s.]

Detroit is a lot like Cleveland. Detroit has the Eastern Market; Cleveland has the West Side Market. Detroit has downtown casinos; Cleveland has a downtown casino.

People who wear Tiger caps are cool, as are Indians cap wearers.

What about suburban Berkley, Michigan? Is that worth a visit?

Elmore Leonard ate at the Beverly Hills Café. I wonder if that’s part of the national Beverly Hills Café chain, or an independent restaurant in Beverly Hills, Michigan.

I wonder if Elmore Leonard spent his winters in Detroit. I bet he didn’t. He wrote a lot about Florida.

I have some Elmore Leonard junk mail.  My friend Charlie, a Detroiter, gave it to me.

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. That’s worth reading.

Maple is 15 Mile. Big Beaver is 16 Mile.

What about Oakland University? Does the U. have Bobby Seale barbecue sauce in the cafeteria?

Motown, Berkley, Beverly Hills and Oakland.  Elmore Leonard’s golden land.

(A version of this post, “The Lodge,” appeared here  9/5/12.)

Re: my op-ed in today’s NYT (8/17/13)

Welcome, New York Times readers.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a New York minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the LEFT and click “submit.”  (TMI: Scroll down on the LEFT to a pink button that says “Yiddishe Cup Home.” You’ll see  “join the mailing list” there.)  You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.

I’ve been in the Times op-ed section four times lately.  Who else can say that?  (Friedman, Brooks, Dowd.  They don’t count! They’re not freelancers.)

Subscribe to this blog.

At minimum, buy this album from my son the musician!  (I’m a stage dad, today only.)  My son has 100,000-plus hits on some of his YouTube videos. His pic was recently in Rolling Stone.

My op-ed today is a lot about family, so you might be interested — you still reading this? — to learn more:

My son Jack’s band, Vulfpeck, will be in New York  on October 4.

My son the lawyer, Ted, is a two-time Jeopardy! champion. The Times left that out!  Ted is a top-notch lawyer.  Ted, sue somebody for me.

Yes, I’m a proud dad.

My daughter, Lucy, and her husband,Tim, didn’t make the op-ed. (Lucy said, “Thank goodness.”) Here’s an equal opportunity addendum: Tim is a first-grade teacher, and Lucy is a corporate event planner in Chicago. Check out Lucy’s  event at the White House.

Shabbat shalom ( for those who celebrate).

See you here every Wednesday, or else!

P.S. I bought the paper — the Times.  The whole freaking Times.  That’s why I’m in it so much.  Bezos and me, we’re partying right now.

Stratton (white cap) surrounded by minority investors in NYT

I didn’t feel like playing the old standards, such as “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn” and “Tumbalalaika.”   Instead I read neo-beatnik prose from my blog.

Bad move.

I was performing at a nursing home. A resident in the front row said, “Play something we know!” and walked out.

My accompanist — keyboardist Alan Douglass — told me to change my act.  He said, “The Who went to their greatest hits whenever they faltered.”

I stuck with the blog stuff.  I wanted to be like Dylan at Newport — my own man.

Again, bad move.

Afterward, I  told my wife,  ‘I feel like I just played Sowinski Playground.”  (Sowinski was a city playground where vicious rapes occurred in the 1960s.)

I’ve learned my lesson:  My Ferlinghetti schtick doesn’t cut it at Myers Apartments–Menorah Park Center for Senior Living.  Next time I’ll play “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn” and “Tumbalalaika.”  And I’ll add Ginsberg’s “Kaddish”!

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SIDE B

ROBERT WOODWARD

Robert Woodward, who died in June, was a newspaperman, but not the Bob Woodward of Watergate fame.

Robert Woodward worked as a clerk at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He was a tenant of mine.

Bob Woodward

He signed his lease renewals in green ink. I made it a point to countersign in green. Sometimes I had to go out of my way to find a green pen.

I’m not sure what Bob did at the PD. I occasionally saw him at the movies. He was a film buff. Once we coincidentally flew on the same flight to New York. He was going to see movies. This was before cable TV.

Woodward was a tenant for 37 years. He died at age 65. He had been dead in his suite for about four days. A sister called and said she hadn’t heard from him. The cops went in. Bob’s brother said it was a massive heart attack.

Bob never bugged me, except for new appliances. He never wanted people fixing stuff in his apartment.

In 2010 I got Bob a Hotpoint refrigerator ($499).

Bob was the perfect tenant.

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This post is not Bob’s life story!  For instance, not covered here:  Bob wrote op-eds about gay rights for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1980s.