Real Music & Real Estate . . .

The small tough Jews in my high school were wrestlers, except for the one who was a gymnast.

I saw the gymnast — and his wife — years later at a Yiddishe Cup concert.  I said to the wife, “Your husband was a star!”  She didn’t seem to know that.

The great Reed Klein.  He went on to the Ohio State  gymnastics team.  Reed was the only gymnast in our high school.  There was no team.  Reed was an iron man and one small tough Jew.  Five-foot-five, max.

The other small tough Jews were Harry Kramer and Steve Gold.  They wrestled in very low weight classes, like 93 pounds and 103 pounds in junior high.

Small Jewish wrestlers — as a classification — are still with us.  The Cleveland Jewish News ran an article titled “Gross, Jacober, Harris place in state mat meet.”  The boys are Beachwood High’s 112-, 130- and 125-pound wrestlers.

My son Jack wrestled in  middle school.  The matches were so primal: two or three minutes of  animal behavior in a stinky windowless wrestling room.  Tough and scary.  And I was just watching.

My wife dated a wrestler in high school.

Maybe I should have wrestled.

It never entered my mind.  I don’t like singlets.  I don’t like armpits – other guys’.  I don’t like headlocks, unless Bobo Brazil is giving one to Lord Layton, and it’s 1960.

 ——-

The yideo below, “Stratton of Judea,” is from the Klezmer Guy live show.  The clip is about my father changing his last name.   One of my better efforts.

The text – but not the video — was posted here Sept. 16, 2009.

—–

Yiddishe Cup plays 7 p.m. Thurs., Aug 25, at Wiley Middle School, 2181 Miramar Blvd., University Heights, Ohio.  The concert is in the air-conditioned auditorium rather than on the lawn, due to construction outside the building.   Free.  More info at 216-932-7800.

I rented to a commercial photographer who moved out after 23 years and left a store full of manila folders, invoices, developing trays and chemicals.  Three dumpsters’ worth.  He shouldn’t have done that.  I had never hassled him about late fees.

Down the street, the Armed Forces Recruiting Center moved out after 40 years and left a punching bag, three couches, 27 chairs, a lot of  “Army of One” promotional material and a 1970s stereo system.  That wasn’t the half of it.

The good news: the government — unlike the photographer — paid for the clean-up.  Also, I got $75 for the Armed Forces sign on Craigslist.  (I thought the sign would go for more.)

Perfume bottle doubling as a pen holder

I’m sitting on about 3,000 perfume bottles.  I’m not totally sure they are perfume bottles.  Martha’s Beauty Salon left the bottles in the basement.  The bottles are packed in cartons with zone numbers on them, not zip codes. (Pre-1963.)

Every month I serve an eviction notice on a lawyer.   Every single month.  Then I file an eviction on him.

The lawyer rents a storefront office.  I pay the $85 eviction filing fee and get a court date.

The day before the court hearing, the lawyer pays the rent, including the legal fees.  Like clockwork.

Until he doesn’t.

At eviction court he said to me, “I’m broke.”  No tears, no dough.  “You’re in business.  You understand,” he said.  “I don’t have the money.  I’m moving out.”

He turned in the keys and cleaned the place.

He stole money from his clients.  He was disbarred in April and convicted of grand theft in June.  Sentencing is next month.

Note to the probation department: he left the store clean.

—-

As my dad used to say . . .

Meaning: Pay the rent.  We aren’t a loan company.

Constantin Ferrito, a neighbor, was an usher at the Stadium.  Good for him.  Not good for us — the neighborhood kids.  Mr. Ferritto didn’t allow kids to sneak into the box seats, even though Cleveland Municipal Stadium was usually three-quarters empty.

Mr. Ferritto’s wife was also  hard on us.  Specifically, she was very sensitive to noise — except her son’s.  Her son, John,  played piano a lot.  He would not shut up on piano.

I practiced an hour a day on clarinet; John Ferritto was just getting warmed up at an hour.

Another neighbor, Frankie, practiced a half hour on trumpet and a half hour on piano.  His father kept a clock on him.  Frank’s sister punched the clock for a half hour on piano and a half hour on accordion.

John Ferritto ultimately attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and Yale, and became a conductor.

Right now –- a million decades later –- a neighbor is playing drums a block from me.  I might call the cops on him.  I’m sick of hearing his drums. He plays in his garage, and the sound reverberates.  He plays all year round, even during school hours; he must be an adult.

Should I call the cops?

Nobody called the cops on John Ferritto.  Nobody called the cops on me.

Somebody did call the cops on Yiddishe Cup.  We were playing a bar mitzvah party in a backyard in Shaker Heights.  No music allowed  in Shaker after 10 p.m.

I can’t call the cops.

My best option: Go nuts.

—
Footnote: “Frank” is a pseudonym.

—-
Here’s an original yideo, “Is Dave Brubeck Jewish?”

Poet Robert Bly’s worst nightmare was visiting his family in Minnesota and attending hockey games.  Maybe not as bad as Vietnam, but up there pain-wise, he said.

Bly’s anti-Midwest rap was a big hit in Ann Arbor in the 1970s.  Bly’s main message: your parents are middle-class stiffs; your real family is elsewhere.  Try the counterculture.

Robert Bly, 1970

Bly was a 44-year-old Harvard man in a ridiculous serape.  He had a lot of chutzpah dispensing life advice in that shmate.

I was a mama’s boy and proud of it.  My family was out of sight.  Whenever I went home for vacation, I received the treatment due the future Dr. Stratton.  I did the occasional minor chore, like emptying the dishwasher and dusting.

Some of my college buddies didn’t go home.  They were scared of becoming middle-class, even for a single weekend.

At home I hung around with old neighborhood pals.  My friend John was installing tanning booths.  My other neighbor, Frank (not his real name), owned shares in a racehorse.  Frank worked as a mutuel clerk at the day-time Thoroughbred track and at the trotters’ track at night.  When Frank wasn’t working, he was  firing his .357 magnum at beer cans in the woods.

I was an American Jew who knew something about guns.  Not a lot, but enough to turn a burglar into Swiss cheese with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Bly knew about guns, too, and Midwestern culture.  But it wasn’t his thing.

***

Mark Schilling, 1970

For my college American English class,  I traveled with my friend (and classmate) Mark Schilling to southwest Ohio to research dialects.  We asked the Buckeye hicks to choose between bag/sack,
eaves trough /gutter,
belly whopper/belly slam,
lightning bug/firefly and warsh/wash.

Mark’s parents said “warsh” instead of “wash.” They lived in Troy, Ohio, just north of Dayton.  (This was North Midland dialect country.)

Mark didn’t return to Troy after college.  He wasn’t interested in becoming a J.C. Penney store manager like his dad.

Mark Schilling, 1977

Mark went to L.A. , then on to Japan.

He’s still in Japan 36 years later.

Beat the drum for Mark Schilling, Bly.

Bly, you only spent a year or two in Norway!

—-

—-

Mark Schilling, 2010:

Zemach Zedek, on Lee Road by the old Cleveland Heights post office, is the only storefront shul left in Cleveland.

I was in Zemach Zedek (Z.Z.) a few months ago with my cousin’s teenage son Aaron, who was visiting from Kansas City.  Aaron is Orthodox and wanted to go to morning minyan (quorum).

Zemach Zedek, aka Z.Z.

Because I’m a lefty, I needed left-handed tefillin (tefillin).  The nine other guys in the minyan had to scramble for lefty tefillin.  (Lefty tefillin are wrapped different than righty.  Fact: Lefty tefillin go on the right arm.)

Z.Z. in Hebrew

Afterward, I asked Aaron if he wanted to go back the next day to daven (pray).  He said, “I don’t think anybody there speaks English.  It was like Europe or something.”  So we went to Green Road, to a Modern Orthodox shul.

I knew the rabbi at Z.Z.  Rabbi Kazen.  He wasn’t there.  He was living with family in New York, I heard.

Chabad-Lubavitch –- headquartered in New York –- had sent Rabbi Kazen out to Cleveland in 1953.   Rabbi Kazen was a shochet (ritual slaughterer) at Coventry Poultry while running the shul.  Coventry was the last live kosher poultry market in Cleveland.  (Rabbi Kazen was involved in a few  “lasts.”)   Coventry Poultry closed in 1995 to make way for a parking garage.  My wife, Alice, did a photo project on Rabbi Kazen in 1980:

Zalman Kazen, shechita knife and chicken

I admired Rabbi Kazen.  He drove a school bus — often filled with Russian immigrants — and lived on Glenmont Road in the student area.  He appeared to be the emes: the real thing.  He fed the poor and was usually in a good mood.   Rabbi Kazen looked like Menachem Schneerson, the late head rabbi of Chabad.  (No biggie. Half of Chabad looks like Rabbi Schneerson.)

I first heard the word freylekh at Rabbi Kazen’s in 1978.  A davener (worshipper)  said to Rabbi Kazen, “Your daughter’s khasene, rabbi, it should be freylekh.”

What? I didn’t understand the Yiddish “punch line.”

I guessed the first part correctly (chasene) from the context. Wedding.  [Years later, an Orthodox woman said to me, “Does Yiddishe Cup play chasenes?” I said, “Yes, we’ve played for Hadassah.” She said, "Chasenes!"]

I asked the davener at Rabbi Kazen’s what freylekh meant.

Freylekh is “cheerful, lively.”

Freylekhs is also a klezmer term for a lively fast dance.  I say “freylekhs” a lot now.  I announce:  “The band is going to play a freylekhs, hora, ‘Hava Nagilah’ medley . . . whatever.”  And we hit the downbeat.

Rabbi Kazen died last week at 92  in New York.

Strike up a freylekhs — and a “Chicken Dance” lick — for Rabbi Kazen and Z.Z.

A tenant peed in the heating ducts and poured aquarium gravel into the toilet.  Several other residents used the cheap hollow-core doors for karate practice.  The apartment building looked genteel, but it wasn’t.   Jamestown Village, on the West Side, was a post-war, modern apartment complex.

Many tenants lived beyond their means; they liked the swimming pool, the playground and A/C, but couldn’t really afford these amenities. There were a lot of evictions.

The complex was garden-style, low-rise buildings set around a pool.  All the buildings had mansard roofs like McDonald’s.  My father kept a sketch of Jamestown Village in our family room.

A high school wrestling coach, who was also a big-time real estate investor, bought the complex and converted it to condos in 1976.  That worked out well for the coach and my dad.  As my dad’s banker said, “You made your money, and  he made his.”

I worked on the Jamestown Village roof, replacing lids to vents.  The lids were called jap caps because they looked like coolie hats.

There was no better place than a roof top — at least a flat roof. You could see everybody, and nobody could see you.  That’s why cops in The Wire go on roofs so often.

But it wasn’t all fun and games on the roof.  There was some work too:

Lesson 1:  Modified bitumen membrane is the basic black roof, usually applied with a blow torch.

Lesson 2:  Thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) roofs look like white pool liner.  Your roof  is reflective.  Cleveland has more “heat” days than “cool” days, which means white roofs (TPOs) are great in Dallas, but not so great in Cleveland.

Lesson 3: Summer is the best time to put on a roof.  I had a roof installed in April and it rained constantly, and the job was a mess; we had leaks into the apartments below.

Lesson 4:  Consider vacationing on a roof.  There might be an old longue chair up there, left by a rebellious tenant who sneaked up for sunbathing and serious drinking.  People want to be on roofs badly.

There is usually an empty tar bucket for your guest to sit on.

Roof & Relaxation

—-

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an op-ed of mine yesterday.  Something about baseball cards.  Gotta write about baseball if you want to be in the big leagues: “Investment Home Run.”

Barry Weinberg, the owner of Mayfield Music in Cleveland Heights,  rented PA systems and sold amps, guitars and drums. He died at 55.  He was a rocker who lived hard.  The sign at the back of his store read Give Me the Dough and You Can Go.

He carried a quality line of blues harps.

Before Barry, Mayfield Music was Chick Chaikin’s store. Chick lived pretty hard too, but in a middle-class way: Chick golfed, raised a family and played thousands of cocktail-
piano gigs.

Chick Chaikin

Chick was a big-band leader and solo pianist for decades.  He played six nights a week at the Colony Restaurant, and  knew just about every pop song written, according to trumpeter Bob Dreifort, who I talked to recently.

Cleveland Plain Dealer 8/23/74

Chick’s brother Bill went out to Hollywood and eventually ran a movie studio, Avco Embassy.  Bill was involved in The Graduate and more.

“I could have gone to the Coast too,” Chick said.  “But my life is here, and I have my work,  although every winter I say this is it. But I’m still here.”  (Plain Dealer interview, 1977)

Chick’s store was Currier-Chaikin Music.   Chick’s business partner, John Currier, was even older than Chick.  John Currier had played piano at Euclid Beach Park in the 1920s.

Cleveland Plain Dealer 1/23/53

Chick called me “Toby’s son.”  Chick didn’t know my name. Chick and my father, Toby, were Kinsman Road boys.

Most of my father’s friends and acquaintances were businessmen: shoe store owners, insurance men, pawn shop owners.

How did my dad know a full-time musician?  I guess Toby had no choice.  Toby and Chick grew up almost next door to each other.

How did Chick wind up a full-time musician? I didn’t ask questions about old people when I was in my twenties.

Chick’s life was all about family and music, his daughter, Jeri, told me this year.  For a while Chick had a side job giving private music lessons through Cleveland public schools.

I didn’t have the chutzpah to ask Jeri if there was more to Chick’s headstone than Leonard ‘Chick’ Chaikin 1915-2000.

Here are three fitting epitaphs:

a)  “Here lies a man who made a living at music.”

b)  “Chick a la King. He tickled the ivories.”

c)  “I’m here 7 nights a week.”

—-

When commenting, please check the new  “I am not a spammer” box right below the “submit” button.

When Mel, the bride’s father,  inquired about Yiddishe Cup’s fees, he said his grandmother had baby-sat Joel Grey (Mickey Katz’s son).  Mel asked if Yiddishe Cup knew any Mickey Katz tunes.

I said, “We play more Mickey Katz songs than anybody in the world! You’ve heard us, right?”

No, he hadn’t.

I said, “Have you been under a rock for twenty-one years?”

Mel was from Cleveland.  Where had he been hiding?  Mel said he didn’t get around much.  He used to get around.  He said, “Where did you go to high school?”

“Brush,” I said.

Mel graduated from nearby Cleveland Heights High — a rival — but, nevertheless, he was OK with Brush High.  He had played softball with Brush boys in a JCC league.  Mel was six years old than me; I didn’t know any of his Brush buddies.

Mel’s daughter – the bride — was 31 and living in Brooklyn — Yiddishe Cup’s target demographic.  I said, “Has your daughter checked out Yiddishe Cup’s Web site? It doesn’t matter if you like Mickey Katz.  She’s calling the shots. ”

“Do you know Joel Schackne?” Mel said.  (Schackne had been a champion tennis player at Heights High.)

“I know of him.  Whose idea is the Jewish music?”

“Schackne is in Florida.  He’s still playing tennis.”

“What does your daughter think about Jewish music?”

“What AZA were you in?”  (AZA: a B’nai B’rith boys’ club.)

“I was in a JCC club.”

The Great Schackne

A week later, I met Bob, a cleaning supply man, and also a Heights High grad.  I met him at an AIPAC meeting.   Bob was not OK with Brush.  He said, “Brush was a bunch of greasers and Italians!”

The AIPAC speaker, a Brush grad by the way, had left Cleveland years ago to attain multiple Ivy League degrees and become a weapons analyst with the government, maybe the CIA.  He was an old friend of mine.  I wanted to talk Iranian nuclear capabilities with him.  The inside story.  He didn’t.

Ron, a Brush graduate living in Connecticut, phoned to say he was in Cleveland at a nursing home, visiting his dying mother.  Ron asked if anybody was still in town.  (“Anybody” meant “Our Crowd.”)

I said, “Nobody is here.” Most of our gang had left.  The Jewish guys still in town were, for the most part, entrepreneurs and family-business owners.  A couple local guys had even made serious money.  One, who built cell phone towers, was a playboy with femme fatales poolside.

Howard, a Brush grad in New York, called.   He was coming through Cleveland.  His parents were moving to assisted living.  He said we should get together.

Did I have a post–high school life?

I think so.  I’m not stuck on high school.  But the subject does come up.  I live in my hometown.  What can I say?

Go Arcs.
—-
1. Mel didn’t hire Yiddishe Cup for his daughter’s wedding.
2. The Arcs is the nickname of Charles F. Brush High School.  Brush, a Cleveland inventor, developed the arc light, which illuminated streets prior to the incandescent bulb.

—-
A version of this post appeared in the Heights Observer online on April 26, 2011.

The first three digits in your Social Security number mean something. For instance, 545-573 and 602-626 indicate you are a native Californian. 268-302, an Ohioan.

That’s history. Effective Saturday, newly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) will have no geographical significance. The “Social Security Number Randomization” policy hits.

New Gavins, Emmas and Destinys will get random SSNs.

I read about the randomization policy in the Social Security Administration/IRS quarterly newsletter to employers.

I look at Social Security numbers a lot because I’m a landlord. One apartment applicant wrote his SSN as 900-. There are no 900-999s. I turned him down on the spot. Likewise, there are no 000s-. And I don’t rent to 666-; that’s the devil’s number, and the Social Security Administration (SSA) doesn’t stock it.

The SSA website says, “If your [SSN] concerns are firmly rooted in your religious beliefs or cultural traditions, Social Security will review your request.”

The new randomization policy will extend the number of available SSNs. There are 435 million unused numbers. Dead people’s numbers go to the grave with them.

What about a vanity SSN? Are the feds thinking of that?

They should. Parents might pay $100 for a snazzy SSN — say, a 999-. Something that would stand out on Baby Emma’s college application 17 years from now.

Just say no to randomization.

Baby Emma is not a random number. And Gavin is an Ohioan — a proud Buckeye. Destiny, she is a California girl (602-).

Joe Buckeye

—-

Due to a computer glitch, this post (“Just Say No to Randomization”) didn’t go up on Wednesday June 22. It went up today, Saturday June 25.

—-

Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer last Sunday. “Harvey Pekar’s Hollywood Hustle.”

Gratz College in Philadelphia offers an online course called Comparative Genocide.

The teacher, Sean Martin, lives in Cleveland.

I said to Sean, “I think Don DeLillo wrote about Hitler Studies in a novel, but that was a novel.  Comparative Genocide, is it real?”

“Gratz named the course,” Sean said. “I didn’t.  It’s a real course.”

Sean also teaches classes on ethnicity and the Holocaust in Cleveland.  He speaks Yiddish and Polish, and has a PhD.

Sean, from Weirton, West Virginia, is of Italian and Appalachian descent. (There is also a Yiddish scholar from Japan.)

I said to Sean, “You’re interested in everything you’re not, is that it?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“In the Comparative Genocide class, does everybody try to top the Jews’ story? ” I said.  “The Jews are the gold standard?”

“There’s some of that going on,” Sean said.  “But that’s not the intent.  Let me repeat, I didn’t pick the name of the course.  Gratz has got to change that.”

—–

Here’s an original Klezmer Guy movie,  “Nine Days to Die.”   It’s funny.   My “bro” — Stuart — has followed me my whole life.  Or I’ve followed him.

The Challah Fame announced its lecture series today:  The Art of Klezmer . . . How to Make it Hypnotic, Bruising and Revelatory.

Klez Mezzrow, lecture series curator

The lectures are free, but attendees must bring doctors’ permission slips. Some lectures might be dangerous, according to the brochure.

The first lecture is June 15, featuring Hankus Netsky, bandleader of the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

6/15  Hankus Netsky HOW DO I STOP THIS THING?

Should a klezmer song end with a “squirt” (quarter note) or a “pop” (eighth note)?   Or how about a simple  I-V-I chord tag?  Or  should the bandleader just scream, “It was all a mistake!”

Netsky is clear and emotive.  Expect audience participation, including hummus-smearing and firearms.

6/22  Sarah Gordon WEATHER THAT KILLS

Sarah, a singer and third-grade teacher in New York, will talk about corporal punishment.  Gordon’s punk-klez band, Yiddish Princess, is best known for “Painkiller” and “Weather That Kills.”   Gordon gives us an insider’s look at the combative multivalent New York klezmer scene.  Bring knives.  Sarah  is going to recreate the West Side Story switchblade scene in Yiddish.  Volunteers needed.

7/9  Don Friedman PRAISED BE KLEZMER!

Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman,  is the spiritual leader of The Churchagogue in Twinsburg, Ohio.  Donny invented the Jewish freewill offering; it isn’t free.  Donny was the recipient of Sweden’s “Little Drummer Boy” prize ($753,000) last year and invested much of that in upgrading The Churchagogue, which attracts more than 2,000 worshippers on a typical shabbes morning.  Free refills on the Mogen David through “Eyn Keloheynu.”  Donny delivers his most famous sermon tonight: “Time. Sometimes it passes slowly. Sometimes it flies by.”

7/29  Alice Stratton OLD-SCHOOL MATH

Alice talks about pacing and musical symmetry.  She takes us back to the days when hora tempos were T-120 (120 beats/minute) and veteran pianist Pete Sokolow‘s blood pressure was under 120.  Alice, a dance leader with Yiddishe Cup, makes her second Challah Fame appearance tonight.  In 2000 she debuted her dance “Some Kind of Cheesy Orgy” at The Challah Fame grand opening.

8/6  Daniel Kahn SLACKIN’ WITH DANNY K

Daniel Kahn, a.k.a. Danny K, chants the trope of recuperative klezmer here.  No worries, it’s all good.  How to enjoy life by playing music, singing, or just listening.  Kahn, from Berlin, does mixed-genre exploring, using ketchup, sauerkraut and clarinets.  Samples afterward.

9/15  Michael Winograd THE 2011 KLEZMER MANIFESTO

Wino, the 28-year-old klez clarinet phenom, delivers the first klez manifesto since Alicia Svigals wailed her “Against Nostalgia” rant at the 1996 Wesleyan University Klezmer Conference.

Here are some of Winograd’s key points:

1. It’s a lonely world.  Hi, everybody.
2. I’ve done many things wrong.  Sorry about that.
3. I get paid to eat at weddings. Why?
4. A scrap of paper in my wallet says I owe you.  Shut up, scrap!

10/3 Ted Stratton MUSIC THAT REPELS

Stratton focuses on life’s basics: dirt, worms, aphids, flies and klezmer music. What’s real, what’s not? What’s fake, what’s authentic? What’s cool, what’s dumb? Stratton looks at the avant-garde in his rearview mirror; he’s way ahead of you. His latest book is The Limbo: Still Rockin’ at 50. How Long Can It Go?

10/13  Mark Rubin THE IN-N-OUT BURGER IN IASI, ROMANIA

Rubin leads us on a virtual eating tour deep into Europe, a la Borat.  Rubin focuses primarily on risk-taking in eating.

Rubin will be barbecuing ribs throughout the lecture and not washing his hands.  Some spitting too. Samples afterward.

11/2 Daniel Ducoff AQUA-KLEZMER

Daniel Ducoff, a swimmer and Yiddishe Cup dance leader, talks about the awe-inspiring aspects of the Jewish water experience.

What is “difficult” will be “not difficult” after Daniel’s lecture.  You will not be afraid of  the 10-meter board or the mikvah.

Mystical, glorious and powerful mayim (water). Heartbreaking too.  Bring a suit.  There will be a baby pool and high board. Expect some broken bones.

11/19 Walt Mahovlich SITUATION REPORT: THE GYPSIES AND THE JEWS

Walt‘s lecture is a split-perception event.  Half the audience wears “I ♥Yiddish” buttons, and the other half  gets
“I ♥ Roma”  badges.  Challah Fame staffers are the U.N. observers.  Let’s see what happens.  Situation report to follow.

12/1 Moshe Berlin THE BOUNDARIES OF BLUR

Israeli clarinetist Moshe Berlin lectures in Hebrew on the differences between Israeli and American klezmer music.  Free Holy Land yarmulkes to all who attend. Also, Moshe will pass out learsi refrigerator magnets afterwards. “Learsi”  is “Israel” spelled backwards. The Learsi Project encourages you to read everything — even English –
right-to-left.

—
Footnote: 1.3 percent of the words in this post are stolen from the Poetry Project Newsletter #226.
—

Enjoy the “Klezmer Guy” blog, accompanied by beer, food
and music . . .

Nighttown
Tues. (June 14)
7:30 p.m.
$10

Spoken word, klezmer, rock, pop, Tin Pan Alley and alley.

Bert Stratton, clarinet, spoken word
Alan Douglass, piano, vocals
Jack Stratton, drums, beat-box

Lots of new material in this show. Your name might pop up in the script.

Nighttown
12387 Cedar Rd., Cleveland Hts.
216-795-0550
www.nighttowncleveland.com

—

Yiddishe Cup — the whole band — is at Parade The Circle, Cleveland, 11 a.m. Sat. (June 11). We’re playing a pre-parade concert.

We’ll also be at Temple Israel (Akron, Ohio) Sat. night (June 11), 8 p.m., for a concert. 330-762-8617.

–

Check out this funny and good 1970 Kickstarter video by Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer, Jack Stratton.

Drug Mart is a dollar store/drugstore on Cleveland’s West Side. I buy shampoo and cough drops there.  Also, shoehorns, Gorilla tape and off-brand Cheerios (formerly Tasteeos, now Toasted Oats).

Drug Mart sells the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, but I never see anybody buy the papers except for an elderly man in a suit and tie. 

What is this guy doing on the West Side?

I stood in back of him in line, and had time to kill.   I said, “I wouldn’t normally bring this up — like if we were on the East Side [where the Yidn live] — but you look like my uncle.  You have to be a landsman.” [Paisan]

He smiled and said, “I’m Charlie Lichtman. And what are you doing here?”

“I own property here.”

“Houses?”

“Buildings, like the old Armed Forces Recruiters building.”  Which was two blocks away.

Charlie said, “I live in the new Armed Forces building.” The fancy condos — with recruiting offices underneath — across the street from my building.

“You aren’t from around here?” I said.

“I’m from New York,” he said, handing me a card: Charles M. Lichtman Jr., attorney at law, Cleveland and
New York.

“I had an article in the New York Times yesterday,” I said. I was just waiting for somebody — anybody — to say “New York,” or “times” or “new.”

“I read the article,” Charlie said.

I Googled Charlie when I got home. He had graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and so had his father (Harvard ’14, Harvard Law ’16).   His father had been the president of the Harvard Menorah Society (a precursor to Hillel) in 1915.

Charlie was apparently old German Jewish money (“Our Crowd” division, NYC). And he was at the Drug Mart on the West Side of Cleveland.

Why?

An attractive woman stood next to him.  “That’s why I’m here,” Charlie said, pointing to her.

—
“Charles M. Lichtman Jr.” is a pseudonym.

—

Enjoy the “Klezmer Guy” blog, with w/ beer, food
and music . . .

Nighttown
Tues. June 14
7:30 p.m.
$10

Spoken word, klezmer, rock, pop, Tin Pan Alley and alley.

Bert Stratton, clarinet, spoken word
Alan Douglass, piano, vocals
Jack Stratton, drums, beat-box

Lots of new material in this show.  Your name might pop up in the script.

Nighttown
12387 Cedar Rd., Cleveland Hts.
216-795-0550
www.nighttowncleveland.com

—

Yiddishe Cup — the whole band — is at Parade The Circle,  Cleveland, 11 a.m. Sat., June 11.  We’re playing a pre-parade concert.

We’ll also be at Temple Israel (Akron, Ohio)  that night (June 11), 8 p.m., for a concert.  330-762-8617.

A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, Jake Ehrenrich’s one-man Broadway show, was unadulterated nostalgia.  Jake even flashed photos of his bar mitzvah on the big screen on stage.

The show came through Cleveland recently.  The audience, for the most part, loved the sentimentality and obviousness of the play.  Did you know Jake and other Brooklynites played stickball?  Did you know Irving Berlin was born Isadore Balin?  Did you know Jews wrote many popular Christmas and rock songs?

This just in: Jews like baseball.

What about bark mitzvahs?  (Bar mitzvahs for dogs.)  Aren’t those (fake) events outrageous and cute?  Jake projected dogs in yarmulkes and tallism (prayer shawls) onto the screen.

There are acceptable levels of schmaltz and shtick.  Jake exceeded those levels.

I know, Yiddishe Cup is not exactly schmaltz-free.  And Yiddishe Cup gets negative reviews too.  We’re schmaltzy. We play “Romania” at the end of most of our shows.  That is the imprimatur of a klez shtick band.  But we also play original comedy tunes and regularly rip off the great Mickey Katz.

We would gladly add more high-brow material to our shows if we could play our instruments better.  But we wouldn’t add too much high-brow.

Some high-brow bands are monotonous, repetitive and monotonous.  No names here; I don’t want to alienate any of my musician friends.  OK, I’ll name one group . . .

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

These drum-crazed Cuban dudes play rhythm patterns on four drums for 45 minutes.  And that’s just the first set. Very little melodic or harmonic variation.  No chording instruments.  No talking between songs.

Yiddishe Cup talks.  We explain our tunes and ad lib asides. I might say, “Ladies and gentlemen, on keyboards, Winston Churchill.”  That’s class.

Jake Ehrenrich, in his show, lifted many old Jewish jokes. That was the best part of his show — his Catskills routine.  (And he’s a good singer and musician.)

Jake’s best joke:

Two Jewish men are walking by a church sign:

Abe says, “I’m thinking of doing it — converting.”

Murray says, “What? Are you crazy?”

Abe goes into the church and comes out ten minutes later.

“So?” Murray asks. “Did you get the $500?”

Abe says, “Is that all you people think about!”

Hurray for Oy Vey.  There’s a market.  And I want the T-shirt concession in the lobby.

—

For “inside baseball” blog talk, please check out the post below.

Been doing this blog for two years.

Special thanks to our major donors (commenters).  We could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc, Jessica Schreiber, Gerald Ross, Seth Marks, Teddy, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling, Harvey Kugelman, Terri Zupancic, Ellen, Susan Greene . . .

David, Margie,  Irwin Weinberger, John Urbancich, Jane Lassar, Zach Kurtz, Ben Cohen, Alice, Alan Douglass, Diddle, Steve, Dan, Jack, Don Friedman, Kenny G,  and Steven Greenman.

Get your name on this list next year by contributing at least $2,500 or writing many comments.

"Substandard paragraphs! Ten cents!"

Also, a special thanks to Ralph Solonitz, the blog’s illustrator.  He adds a lot.  When I write substandard paragraphs, I encourage Ralph to throw in as many pics as possible.  Works out well.

I first met Ralph about 20 years ago when he designed Yiddishe Cup’s logo.

Several people have recently asked when they’re going to get in the blog.  They want in!

On the other hand, many more people say, “Don’t put me in your blog, whatever you do.”

Google Analytics – a spy op — says there are “Klezmer Guy” readers in every state except South Dakota, plus many foreign countries.  (The five most popular countries are Canada, Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.)

Google Analytics, for your information, zeroes in on readers by their hometowns, not their names.  For instance, somebody in Chico, California, reads this blog.

Thanks for hanging in with this blog.  Without you — the reader — I’d be writing for the drawer, which I’ve done and it’s no fun.

When Alice Gibson, a tenant, skipped out, I phoned her because she left her apartment purple, black and yellow.

She didn’t want to talk about that.  She wanted to talk about why I hadn’t changed the toilet seat when she moved in, and why I hadn’t fixed the ceiling in her hallway, and why had my building manager told her she could paint the walls purple, black and yellow if she couldn’t.

Ms. Gibson had never been late on her rent. She was there two years.  She was a good tenant.

But she skipped and used weird paint colors.

“Didn’t you get my final month’s rent?” she said. “I sent it with a note saying I was moving.”

I didn’t receive the check. It was the twentieth day of the month. I went dumpster-diving in my wastebasket for the check.

"I see a Johnnie Walker but no Gibson."

I had a 30-gallon wastebasket.  I wondered how many more times I would go dumpster-diving for liars.

Ms. Gibson had seven months left on her lease. I called her back and threatened to take her to court.

She said, “Go ahead, I’m broke.”

“It’ll be on your public record,” I said. “If you try to buy a car or a house, the ‘public record’ will be on your credit report. At least pay this month’s rent.  You said you mailed it.  I didn’t get it.  So mail it again. Do the right thing.”

She said she would send one-half month’s rent.

I started talking Spanish with her — for bonding’s sake.   A half month’s rent! Better than nothing.   I knew she was going to Argentina.  I ended in English: “Make sure you send it. You know, you painted the kitchen cabinets black.”

“And those cabinets look a lot better than when I moved in!” she said.

I didn’t get the half month’s rent.

I left Ms. Gibson a voice mail: “Pay the half month’s rent. Give it to the Pony Express, or the mailman, or hand-
deliver it to me.  If you don’t, I’m going to sue you.  I don’t care if you are broke.  It’s not right what you’re doing.”

My new tenant — post-Gibson — liked the black cabinets. He also liked Ms. Gibson’s yellow paint job in the kitchen.

Alice Gibson saved me some money on re-painting.  She knew her colors.

She had some pluses.

The “shul with a pool” movement peaked in the 1920s.  Major synagogues in large Eastern and Midwest cities sometimes built sanctuaries with pools attached.   My shul – at its previous location (East105^th Street, Cleveland) — had an indoor pool.  It’s still there, the pool and the shul (now Cory United Methodist Church).

The church has famous Jews’ names carved into the frieze. Hillel, Maimonides, Rashi . . .

Jews and swimming. It’s in the Talmud somewhere: A Jew must learn to swim.

I started my serious swimming — my lap swimming– at the Mayfield JCC in 1995.  I thought I was going to jail; that dingy pool had no natural light.  Russian women in bathing caps and Russian guys in Black Sea briefs bumped into me in the lap lane.

For serenity, I tried the newer JCC in Beachwood.  But that didn’t solve my problem. A doctor/lap swimmer there thought he was playing water polo.  He would bump and splash me.  I liked the guy but not in the water.

***

My favorite indoor lap pool is at the Intercontinental Hotel in Chicago.  I’ve only been there once, but I’d like to go back.  My daughter, Lucy, a renowned globe-trotting event planner, lined up the Intercontinental-with-pool for me.

Johnny Weissmuller trained at the Chicago Intercontinental (formerly a Shriners’ athletic club and hotel).  It’s an historic landmark.

The most beautiful part of the Chi pool: three signs that read laps only.  The pool’s fourth lane has an open swim sign. Usually it’s the other way around: Three lap lanes for horsing around and one for swimmers.

I politely asked a young dad and his bobbing kid to leave my lap lane.  They did.  Then other bobbing dorks encroached.  Couldn’t these kids read laps only? There was no lifeguard.  I muttered, “What a disaster.”

The young dad, overhearing me, said, “The sun is out! You’re alive!  Sorry if we’re ruining your swimming.”

The dad did not understand lap swimming.  He did not realize lap swimming is a quasi-religious experience.  Lap swimming is a combination of mediating, praying, thinking and just zoning out.  A lap swimmer needs a shul in a pool.

—

The New York Times ran an op-ed piece by me on Sunday. Click here to read it.  The article was about love, junk food and Jewish tongue.

Why didn’t the Times use this Ralph Solonitz illustration?

You aren’t going to read this entire blog.  I know that.  You have other things to do. Like working out . . .

Mr. Mentsh benches the Sunday NY Times

Here’s a good idea.  Check out this “best of” list:

1. The three best blog posts are . . .

SEARCHING FOR GALICIA, about the Alter Heym (Old Country); has a photo of my mother;

FECES HAPPENS, about a building manager cleaning up excrement;

and YID LIDS, about a yarmulke collection.

This  site — Klezmer Guy — is primarily an amusing word pile, accompanied by Ralph Solonitz‘s illustrations, original Klezmer Guy videos and Yiddishe Cup music.   And no recipes.

2. The best video is about a beat-boxing drummer (guy in yellow shirt with tie):

3. The best Yiddishe Cup recording is Meshugeneh Mambo — a klezmer comedy album. You can buy and/or listen to it at CDBaby, Amazon, or iTunes. (Yiddishe Cup’s Web site is www.yiddishecup.com. We play all over the country. We also do a duo act.)
Here’s our best song:

Meshugeneh Mambo (Crazy Mambo) by Yiddishe Cup

4. The blog’s illustrator, to repeat, is Ralph Solonitz. His best work is Yiddishe Cup’s logo at the very top of this page.

5. Please sign the mailing list at the lower left of the screen. You’ll get a fresh post delivered to your door every Wednesday morning by herring boat. You will receive one — just one — email a week. (We don’t sell your email address to others.) Or you can “like” us on Facedeath and get a weekly blog post there.

Once again, welcome. Please read the posts below and come back here on Wednesday mornings. Nobody — and that includes the New York Times — covers the klezmer/
landlord scene like we do.

Lox on,

Bert Stratton

Yiddishe Cup played New York.  We rented a van at LaGuardia Airport and drove to a hotel in Elmhurst, Queens, which was like Cleveland except a lot more Asians.  The hotel was between a transmission shop and a Burger King.

New York, New York

We played the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts in 2006. Who knows why.  Who was the program director at the center.  Janet Who. (Joke.)  Maybe we got the gig because no East Coast band was doing klezmer comedy like us.  I don’t know.

In Brooklyn — on our way to the gig — I saw a fender bender. The driver called out, “Would you be a witness?”

“No, I’m from Ohio,” I said.  Shades of Kitty Genovese.

The Yiddishe Cup musicians wondered: Why my schmuck-itude, and why the ‘I’m from Ohio’?

The Ohio remark was because I was daydreaming about our imminent “Midwest Yids Blow NY Lids” headline.  Maybe a New York Post reporter was hiding in our van.  Also, I was preoccupied with not denting our ride — a 15-passenger rental van.  I was weaving through very dense borough traffic, and the last thing I wanted was to get involved with another driver’s dents.  I wasn’t going to wait around 30 minutes for the police, just prior to our New York debut.

We did Catskill comedy tunes at the concert.  The audience — primarily AKs (old people) — loved us.  I thought we were going to play for some young people. Aren’t there a lot of young people in Brooklyn?  Yes.  But they were not at our show.  No reporters showed up either, even though the New York Jewish Week music critic, George Robinson, had written: “Yiddishe Cup is a band that was made for a hip Jewish New York audience.  It’s a wildly funny amalgam of Mickey Katz, Spike Jones, PDQ Bach and straight-ahead klezmer.”

New York Jewish Week, April 21, 2006

The crowd was mostly elderly Flatbush residents.  I brought out some 1957 Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cards and gave the audience a quiz:

What was Duke Snider’s real first name?

Edwin.

What was Pee Wee Reese’s real name?

Harold.

What was Al Walker’s nickname?

Dixie.

The audience got every answer right.  And one man even guessed Duke Snider’s height correctly (6-1).

I talked about Cleveland. I told the crowd I had gone to high school with Eric Carmen of the Raspberries.  That’s what New Yorkers wanted to hear — who I had gone to high school with.  New Yorkers like to say “I went to Sheepshead Bay with Larry David” or “I went to Eramus with Sedaka.” If they don’t repeat that often, they feel like Midwesterners.

Yiddishe Cup felt like New Yorkers.

We did it our way. We flew to New York, got paid and got out of there.  Next stop, Columbus, Ohio.

—
Listen here to the comedy tunes we played in New York.
—
Yiddishe Cup plays the community-wide Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) celebration 6:30 p.m. Mon. (May 10) at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights.

Toilets and radiator valves aren’t that much fun to talk about.

Except my dad, Toby, thought they were.

He rambled on about radiator valves and vents. I said, “I wouldn’t mind being the next Cannonball Adderley.”

“Are you pulling my leg, son? Tell me, so I won’t get mad!”

I was half-pulling his leg.  I liked to upset him — not drive him crazy, just rile him.

Toby said, “The arts are one big ego trip.”

All quiet on the father-son front. I had a flesh wound.

Toby took me to a garbage meeting at the Commerce Club on the second floor of the Theatrical Grill in downtown Cleveland.  I was about 24.  We met haulers, real estate brokers, boiler guys and bankers.

I heard jazz wafting up from the piano bar downstairs.  Glenn Covington was on keys.

A black man — a garbage hauler — interrupted my listening reverie.  He said, “I’m Rasool Akar, Recycling Equipment Company.  Compactors, balers and individualized service.  You like the music?”

“Yeah, the dude sounds pretty hip,” I said.

“I like the dudes who play piano at the same time better. Ferrante and Teicher,” Rasool said.

Dude, you’ve got to be kidding! A Black Muslim into Ferrante and Teicher.

The maître d’ announced the end of the cocktail hour with a chime, and we ate dinner, listening to a speech from the head man of Ohio EPA.

The main question at our table — directed to my dad mostly — was: “You buying?”  (Buying buildings, compactors, Flushmates, anything.)

Toby said, “Depends on the kid.”  Meaning: Depends if Mr. Luftmentsh — Mr. Head-in-the-clouds Son — goes into the real estate biz.

I went into the real estate biz.

My best business moment: opening a checking account for Yiddishe Cup in 1994.  My late father would have been proud I had started a biz from scratch.

My banker was Ervin, a black man who knew all about Don Byron and klezmer.  Ervin was my banker for about a year.  Then he moved to another branch. I tried to follow him. Then he moved again. Screw it.

Ervin printed my checks wrong.  They came out “Yiddishe Cup Klezmer Bank.”  Those were keepers.

My dad loved banks. “Banking is the absolute best business,” Toby had said. “Bankers use other people’s money to make money.”

I started a bank, Dad. The Yiddishe Cup Klezmer Bank offers several enjoyable CDs and free kvetching.

Bialy’s Bagels in University Heights, Ohio, was my bagel supplier for years.  I would go swimming; go to Bialy’s; buy 15 bagels; eat two; drive to my mother’s, give her three; and take the rest home.

I was on a bagel diet; I actually thought eating sesame and poppy seed bagels was a good thing.

My back-up bagel purveyor was Amster’s at Cedar Center.  The counter woman there, Marilyn Weiss, volunteered for school levies, racial integration projects, and did a ton of schlep work at my shul.  Amster’s was all about Marilyn’s personality.  Unfortunately, she died in 2000, and the place closed a few years later.

I also went to Better — as in “Better Bagel” — on Taylor Road.  The owners were New Yorkers who wore kippot (yarmulkes) and Brooklyn Dodgers shirts.   I figured they knew bagels.

They didn’t. Their bagels were too doughy and not crispy enough on the outside.   Better Bagel changed its name to Brooklyn Bagel.  No better.

Go to Bialy’s.  If Bialy’s ever closes, we’re in bagel trouble in Cleveland.