Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Daniel Ducoff, Yiddishe Cup’s dance leader, is the all-in-one-machine: booking agent, valet and shrink.

Daniel has a social-work master’s degree and does free counseling.  For instance, when the musicians go out — like to CVS for candy bars and clubs for drinking — Ducoff hangs back with me  and says:  “What’s a couple extra bucks for beer and Snickers for the boys to to keep them happy?  Don’t fret. ”

Daniel handles all contract negotiations.   It’s not right for the bandleader to yak on the phone about “wiggle room” for the Oshkosh Opera House contract.  That’s Daniel’s job.

Ducoff handles the press too.  Reporters ask, “Why is this klezmer band different than all other klezmer bands?”  Daniel’s  answer: “Yiddishe Cup plays naked.”   The reporters — shlubs who sit in cubicles all day — buy it.

Daniel, who swam competitively in high school, calls ahead for dimensions on  pools at hotels.  Nobody likes to pull up to an “Olympic pool” that is four raindrops.

Daniel knows his way around snack shops.  Sun-baked chips are popular with the band.  Daniel says, “Sun baked chips are still chips, guys. You think the sun zapped the calories out?”

Daniel Ducoff

Daniel knows how to find exquisite — by Midwest standards — sourdough pretzels at all Pilot and Duke truck stops.

Ducoff is also the enforcer.  For example, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman, occasionally blasts hard-bop jazz, like Art Blakey, inside the van.   This is borderline acceptable; it gives the band a certain panache when we pull into Bob Evans in Celina, Ohio, with  “Moanin’” blaring.   But, Don, turn the jazz off already!  That’s Ducoff’s job to tell Don.

Daniel Ducoff is the all-in-one machine.

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This post, “He Gets Paid Extra,” is 49-percent true. It’s klez fiction.

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SIDE B

More klez fiction.  Readers demand it.  Certain readers, that is.  Pete Rushefsky, a NYC klezmer musician, told me, “I don’t read any of your real estate stuff.  I skip that and read the klezmer.”  There are 398 klez fans in the world.  They read this blog.  Enjoy.

GREEN MAN GROUP

I auditioned for Green Man Group at the Cleveland home of klezmer violinist Steve Greenman.

I didn’t play clarinet for Greenman.  I played my eyes.  I looked maniacally Jewish, then playfully Jewish and, finally, soulfully Jewish. I thought “Einstein” the whole time.

I got a callback!   Me and five other guys.

At the callback, Greenman sprayed us green and had us play fiddle patterns in E minor.  This was awkward for me because E minor is a bad key for my axe — clarinet.

But I did OK.

I made it to the final audition.  Me, Pete Rushefsky, tsimbl; and Jeff Warschauer, mandolin.  Greenman knows us all personally.  (That’s show biz.)

We didn’t get sprayed green this time, nor perform. Greenman interviewed us separately.

GREENMAN: A deer jumps on stage while you’re performing.  What do you do?

STRATTON: I play “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” in E minor, then shoot the deer.

GREENMAN: A customer in a wheelchair says, “Stop talking and start playing!”

STRATTON: I say, “I’ll start playing when you stand up.”

GREENMAN: Can you make hot hors d’oeuvres pop out of your instrument?

STRATTON: Yes, and candy apples on Simchat Torah.

GREENMAN: What is the most creative thing you’ve ever done on stage?

STRATTON: I tore up a $100 bill on stage at the Omaha JCC while the audience screamed at me:  “Stop, I’ll take that!”  It was art.

GREENMAN: What if nobody showed up at your gig?

STRATTON: I play hard for zero people just like I play for 6,000, which is what I’m used to.

Jeff Warschauer got the job.  Greenman and Warschauer are both short.  Greenman didn’t want anybody taller than him on stage.  That’s why I didn’t make it.

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I have a piece, “For Cleveland Jews, Schvitz is Must,” in The Forward (online) this week.  Check it out, or read an extended version here in a few weeks.   The longer version should be better; it will contain profanity-laced, schvitzian dialogue.
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A word from Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader:

When I got rid of my LP record abums, my friend Carl said, “How can you do that?”

The LPs were heavy, for one thing.  And I hadn’t listened to them in 20 years.  “Carl, in 10 years I might not be  able to physically pitch them, ” I  said.  “I’ll be pointing at each one from my La-Z-Boy and making my kids choose between Bob Dylan and Charlie Parker.  So I’m doing it now for my kids’ sake.”

I could have put my records on the treelawn (Cleveland-
speak for the grass strip by the curb).   I could have taken the LPs to a record store.  Or a record store could come to me.

A record store came to me.   Pete the Record Guy showed up at my house.

Just prior to Pete, Carl took five LPs for a wall montage.  He liked Coltrane Plays the Blues, Volunteers by Jefferson Airplane, and Archie Shlepp’s Four for Trane — all good cover art.  Carl, a roots-music maven, said I was in the top 5 percent of respectable record collections.

My record collection was my former identity.  It was my Facebook persona, circa 1975.

I found a receipt in a Stuff Smith Black Violin album — $1.50 from Mole’s.   Where was Mole’s?  I don’t remember.  [It was on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights.]

Harvey Pekar

Harvey Pekar used to rifle through my albums.  The only album he ever wanted was my Charlie Parker Memorial Album, Vogue Records, England, 1956.  I didn’t sell it to Harvey.  I figured, If Pekar wants the record that badly, it must be worth something.

I checked on the Charlie Parker Memorial on the Internet.  Today it’s worth £5.40 to an Englishman on eBay.  That’s about $9.  Nothing.  Pekar was always into small numbers.

My kids didn’t want my albums.

I wanted to play Lenny Bruce’s “Lima, Ohio” bit (from The Best of Lenny Bruce) for Carl, but I didn’t have a record player handy.  Carl said, “It’s probably on YouTube.”

Right.  That’s why I got rid of my records.

Pete the Record Guy went through my albums three times.  Adiós Aretha Live at the Fillmore West, John Handy’s Carnival, Paul Butterfield . . .

Let it go.

Three-hundred dollars from Pete for 100 records.  Not bad.  Pete didn’t care about the condition of the records.   Pete said young kids –- his main customers — “won’t buy the reissue LPs, they want the originals, like yours.”

I said, “What jumped out at you? Is there any album worth 90 percent of what you paid me?”

He said, “I like your two Fred Neil’s, Everybody’s Talkin’ and Sessions.  You don’t see those often.”

“Let me take a photo.  Don’t worry, Pete, I’m not taking the records back.”

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SIDE B
(This flip side is a little something extra for readers arriving on the A train from New York Times Square. Northerners, let’s trash the Sun Belt . . .)

ATLANTA: NOT SO HOT

Atlanta is not far enough south for some Atlantans. Right next to the Atlanta airport is a billboard “Beach Bummed?” Meaning, go to Florida.

Atlanta isn’t very good for sunbathing unless you want to tan your left elbow in traffic for several hours.

I was at Atlanta airport, going through nine time zones to get to my gate.  The TSA clerk, glancing at my ticket, said, “So you’re going back to beautiful Cleveland?”

Yes, sir, and it’s a lot better than Atlanta.  (I didn’t say anything.)  Cleveland is not Paris — or Pittsburgh, for that matter — but it’s a step up from a Southern-sprawl traffic crawl.

I’m going to Atlanta this month for a family bat mitzvah, and I have a summer gig there with Yiddishe Cup.  I’ve been to the Coke Museum twice.  Is there a rum-and-Coke museum in Atlanta?  If so, where?

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Atlanta relatives, nothing personal!
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My best writing is “The Landlord’s Tale” in the latest City Journal.  Please check it out.   Must read long amusing essay about real estate now!

re: my op-ed  in today’s NYT (2/29/12).

Do you want to read more landlord stories?  I have millions.  Here are two good ones: “Diving for Dollars” and “Tossed Out.”  Or just scroll down to the next post.

Best idea: Read my piece in the latest City Journal mag.  This article is my best writing.  If you are looking for top-quality real-estate lit, the City Journal article is the way to go. 

Must read long amusing article about real estate now.  Yes, you must.

I do a two-man music/prose show, “Dear Landlord: Real Music and Real Estate.”  You — or your real estate group —  should hire “Dear Landlord.”  We’re ready for the real estate conventions.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, plays all over the country.

I post up here every Wednesday morning.  Please subscribe to this blog.

Thanks.

–Bert Stratton

P.S.  Regular blog readers,  please read the post below too.  It’s fresh.

Retirees usually make good tenants.  Unfortunately, I don’t get many retiree tenants, because most old folks don’t want to live in pre-war hardwood-floor apartments with no dishwasher or A/C.   Been there, done that.

I had an application from Joe, 71, a retired factory worker.
He made $1600/month.

Welcome, Joe.

I ran a criminal search on him as a formality. Aggravated arson, forgery and sexual battery.

Pre-Internet, I would have rented to him.  Pre-Internet,  it was hard to run background checks.  I once rented to a rapist/murderer because I wasn’t schlepping to county records, and the rapist wasn’t volunteering he was a rapist/ murderer.  (The man got picked up on a parole violation and moved out of my apartment without killing or raping.)

I rented to a retired nurse whose previous landlord followed her to my place.  He told me the old lady was a forger and felon.

But she already had the keys to my place!  My building manager had given her the keys in exchange for a dime store ring.

My custodian, Buck, always subverted me.  For example, he thought junk mail should stay in perpetuity; watering outdoor plants was ridiculous; and accepting fake rings was part of the job.

I helped Buck move the retired nurse’s belongings into the basement.  I locked the basement door.

“Give me my meds!” she said.

She had a point.

I gave her meds, plus her toothbrush.

This cost me.

I was young.  I learned two things: a) Don’t ever do a “self-help” eviction.  Lawyers love self-help evictions.  b) Screen all tenants like crazy on the way in.

Cleveland is in the middle of the cereal belt.  Shredded Wheat of Niagara Falls, New York, is to the east, and to the west is Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Shredded Wheat moved from Niagara Falls years ago, but the cereal belt remains.  Cleveland is the buckle.

Clevelander Marty Gitlin just published a cereal encyclopedia, The Great American Cereal Book  (Abrams Images), featuring “hundreds of images of vintage cereal boxes and spokes-characters — Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Lucky the Leprechaun.”

Test-marketed in Cleveland

I had a prospective store tenant who wanted to open a cereal store.  He opened down the street and went under almost immediately.  He was Cereal Central, aka Cerealicious.   Nobody in Cleveland wanted to eat cereal in a store.  (He also had a store in Columbus near Ohio State.  Apparently,  OSU students were willing to eat cereal in a restaurant.)

Most people like to eat cereal alone and not talk about it.  That’s my guess.

In my temple bulletin, no bar mitzvah kid’s profile reads: “Jacob is interested in cereal.”  More often it’s “Morgan enjoys  Sudoku and chatting online, and is a member of the recycling club.”

What is Morgan’s cereal?

Marty Gitlin and I want to know.

***

Musicians — at least one — eat cereal at home after late-night gigs.  Musicians can’t fall asleep after gigs.  Musicians’ heads are filled with fruit loops of “Simon Tov” and “Hava Nagilah.”  (Klezmer musicians’ heads, that is.)

Shredded wheat choices at 1 a.m.: Barbara’s shredded wheat or Quaker shredded wheat.  (Shredded wheat is not trademarkable.)  I mix Barbara’s with Autumn Harvest (Kashi).

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I wrote an “advice column” for the Ann Arbor Observer (February 2012).  Check it out: “Hit the Road, Jack . . . A dad’s advice.”   

Click here to hear what junior (Jack) is up to today:  “Louder Naftule.”  The latest in klezmer.

Drummer Jack Stratton, backed by clarinetists Merlin Shepherd and Lucy Stratton. KlezKamp, 1993. (Photo by Al Winn)

If I didn’t lead a klezmer band, I might not hire one.  Yiddishe Cup might be too Jewish for me.

“Too Jewish” means anything — or anybody — more Jewish than oneself.  Example: Franz Rosenzweig, a German Jewish intellectual, said nothing Jewish — no matter how far out — was alien to him.  I tried Franz’s approach: I davened (prayed) with the yeshiva buchers in Boro Park, Brooklyn; drank schnapps at Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland; and soaked in the mikvah (ritual bath) in Cleveland Heights.  Also, I read Rabbi Sherman Wine’s God-is-dead books.  I covered a lot of humentashn (bases).

Would I hire a klezmer band?

Yes.

I did.  I hired Yiddishe Cup three times — for my kids’ b’nai mitzvot parties.  (And I got a decent price.)

1. For my daughter’s bat mitzvah party, I also hired a troupe of hospital-therapy dogs for the cocktail hour.

2. For my younger son, we had a DJ party, plus the klez band party.  My son organized the DJ party.  He hired the DJ — himself.

3. My older son had a trivia quiz, plus the klezmer band. That worked out well.  He wound up on Jeopardy!

Yiddishe Cup plays, at minimum, 15 minutes of Jewish music, and we use a dance leader, so everybody knows what to do.

Naturally, the goys like us best.  Jews have hang-ups.

I know about Jews and hang-ups.  I have belonged to more shuls than the Pope.  I was Reform, then Conservative, then Reform, and now Conservative again.

My friends and relatives don’t always hire Yiddishe Cup.  But I go to their parties and have a good time.  The weddings are enjoyable; the bar mitzvahs are sometimes difficult.  The DJ and his “dance facilitators” can be loud and obnoxious.  The DJ announces, “The young adults will gather on the dance floor for a group photo.”

Get in the picture yourself, DJ.  You look 18.   And the “young adults” are not young adults, they’re animals.  Stow the glow sticks.  Bring out the cattle prods.

The optimal level of Jewishness is Yiddishe Cup with therapy dogs.

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Yiddishe Cup plays  The Ark 8 p.m. Sat (Feb.4), Ann Arbor, Mich.   Here is an unrepresentative video from last year’s  show:

Every January I spend a day filling out employer tax forms.

My favorite is the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) form.

I did my first FUTA Form 940 in 1978, when my dad went to Florida for the winter.  He and his high school buddies golfed in Boca Raton, and I filled out FUTAs in Cleveland.

Not bad.  I like tax forms better than golf.

Toby Stratton (far L) w/ friends at Boca Lago CC, 1983

The treasurer of Ohio likes his W-2 reconciliations promptly.  The Ohio Bureau of Employment Services also likes its money quickly.  The  Ohio Workers  Compensation bureau has rachmones (pity) and bugs me only twice a year, not quarterly like everybody else.

I used an IBM Selectric-style typewriter for tax forms until the machine died last year.  The A key wouldn’t work.  That was its main drawback.
“ lbert
Str tton”  didn’t cut it with the government.  I threw out the typewriter and several boxes of Ko-Rec-Type.

Now I use IRS computer forms, except for my Yiddishe Cup 1099s, which I do by hand.

Last year I used blue ink on Yiddishe Cup’s 1099s.

The gobierno prefers black ink, I’ve learned.  I’ll get with the program this year.

What are you in jail for?

Blue ink.

No thanks.

***

I wore a camping headlamp and crawled around the attic, culling old manila folders, making room for new files.

The old files weren’t read by anybody.

Why did I save all this stuff?

Because the government wanted me to.

I got insulation flecks on my fleece jacket.  It was freezing up there.  And there were mouse droppings and desiccated rubber bands.

My dad used to recycle manila folders.  For instance, he would reuse the file “1975 Plumbing” in 1981.

I threw out 30 pounds of paid invoices, checks and rent rolls.  I do this every January.

Should I feel nostalgic?

I don’t.

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Here’s an op-ed, “From Soltzberg to Stratton,” from last week’s Jerusalem Post (Jan. 17).

Theodore “Toby” Stratton (ne Soltzberg), 1938, age 21

Louise Stevenson, an elderly tenant, plastered 3- and 4-cent stamps on her rent envelope.  This was in the 1980s.

Miss Stevenson was an old maid and very old school.  She patrolled the building  in a nightgown — a house coat — whatever women wore in the 1950s.  My mom wore one too.  Yes, a house coat.

Miss Stevenson didn’t like the custodians.  These workers never met her standards.  One custodian showed off too much butt crack when he scrubbed the floors.  Another manager supposedly broke into Miss Stevenson’s apartment and stole a book.  A third custodian went barefoot “like a hillbilly” in the hallway.

Miss Stevenson could guess whenever I was coming by; she stood guard by the building’s front door.  I listened to a lot of her diatribes about the decline of the West (Side).

I had a stamp collection too.  I should have talked stamps with her.  But I didn’t.  Miss Stevenson was a bit frightening, and my dad had always taught me: Don’t get personal with the tenants.

Miss Stevenson claimed she was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.  (The stolen book was an autographed Stevenson, she said.)

She carried a shopping bag and took the bus downtown every day, wearing her house coat.

Miss Stevenson died in 1992.   That year a first-class letter was 29 cents.

I hope I get a letter today with eleven 4-cent Lincolns on it.  I won’t, unless Miss Stevenson sends this . . .

—

Postage goes to 45 cents Sunday (January 22).  Add:

I maintained records on my bike, like car owners keep track of oil changes.  Like when I last greased the hub.

I stopped with cleaned power chain in 1983.  I have winged it since.

My bike has  miles on it.  I bought it at Heights Furniture & Toy for $169 in 1978.  ($586 in today’s dollars.)  It’s a 10-speed Kabuki Superlight, which is not super light.  The bike has been to both oceans and several foreign countries.

It’s my wife’s fault.  When I met her, she was training to be an American Youth Hostels bike trip leader.  On our honeymoon, we biked in the Yucatán, where we sucked high-sulfur Mexican truck fumes on jungle roads.  It sucked.  We parked the bikes in Mérida and took the train to Palenque.

The bike and skipper, 1978, Mexico

These days — particularly on weekends — my bike goes automatically to Chagrin Falls, 12 miles east of my garage.  Chagrin Falls is very pleasant.

Chagrin Falls has ice cream shops, a popcorn shop and a bookstore.   Along the way, there are hills and valleys.  Novelist Don Robertson called Chagrin Falls “Paradise Falls.”  The town is, except when I can’t get a free cup of  water at Dave’s Cosmic Subs.   Lighten up, Dave.   How many stores do you own already?

When I’m in southern Ohio on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), my Kabuki bike is the source of  ribbing from bike geeks.

I don’t mind their kidding.

My bike doesn’t mind either.

Ask the bike.  Go ahead, ask the bike . . .

***

Chagrin Falls, January 10, 2012.  Endless summer . . .

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Jack Stratton’s Funklet made Kickstarter’s list of Top 12 Videos of 2011. See the videos here.

The sign at the McDonald’s on Lake Shore Boulevard read: 30-minute time limit while consuming food.  The manager must enforce these rules.  Your cooperation is appreciated.

Several retired cops sat beneath the sign, drinking coffee all morning.

Ex-cop Bill Tofant said to me, “I used to work out every day at the YMCA. You know what that stands for?  The Yiddishe Meat Cutters Union.”

I didn’t know that.  (I was with retired cops because I was a police reporter in the 1980s.)

“I can still run a mile at 73 and hold my own in fisticuffs, and I can turn my head to see if traffic is coming,” Tofant said.

Tofant liked me — or put up with me — because my Great Uncle Itchy Seiger had owned a deli on Kinsman Road, which all the cops used to eat at.   “Your uncle would throw his arms around me every time I came into the restaurant,” Tofant said.  “I couldn’t spend a nickel there.  They had corned beef, turkey, you name it, gherkin pickles.”

The cops at McDonald’s decided to rate pawnbrokers — most of whom were “good sharpYidls.”

I knew one of the Yidls: Larry Botnick of Euclid Loan at East 59th and Euclid.  Larry had played tennis with my father.  Larry got shot and killed in a stick-up.  A couple streets over, there had been another stick-up . . .

“Three colored guys went in back of East 63rd and St. Clair,”  said Bill Lonchar, an ex-cop.  “One guy had a horse pistol yea long. It stuck out like a sore thumb.  It was a military weapon.”

Re: the pawnbroker at East 79th and Hough . . .  1.) not shot at,  and 2.)  “not so good.”  “He would buy a stove [gun] that was red hot and smile.”

The cops  rated Italian.   Not pawnbrokers.  Burglars.  Hardly worth talking about.  “If you’re not Italian, you’re nobody.  All that goddamn bullshit.  All that Italian camaraderie bullshit.”

The Lithuanians were worth talking about.  “The Lits will eat soup for twenty years, three times a day, and save their money, and all of a sudden they buy apartment buildings,” Lonchar said.

The Irish: dunderheads.

The blacks: no comment.

The Slovenians:  “Very respectable.”  Top of the line.   “There was a safecracker, Charlie Broeckel,” Lonchar said.  “He went out to Laguna Niguel, California, and hit a bank there.  Burned [spent] seven-mill worth of shit in negotiable papers.  Charlie always found his way out.  He might have been German, not Slovenian, actually.  His mother held a very respectable job.  She was beyond reproach, nothing like a stumblebum. The Broeckels lived at 8815 St. Clair.”

Put up a plaque.  Lonchar was Slovenian.   [So were the district police commander, the ward councilman and the mayor, Voinovich.  All lived within a mile of  McDonald’s.  (Voinovich was half  Slovenian, half Serbian.  Good enough.)]

—–

Footnote:  “Thank God I’m Slovenian” was a popular bumper sticker in Cleveland in the 1980s.  Cleveland has more Slovenian immigrants than any American city.

The top-selling ethnic  bumper stickers in Cleveland were “Thank God I’m Polish” and “Thank God I’m Irish.”    I know,  I  interviewed the bumper-sticker maker in Broadview Heights.  Special-order: “Thank God  I’m Transylvanian Saxon.”  No market: “Thank God I’m Jewish.”

Check out this vid, Who’s Cheaper: Slovenians or Lithuanians?

I was back from Las Vegas, attending a Shaker Heights brunch.  Several people asked, “Did you play?”

Did Yiddishe Cup play Vegas?

I wish Yiddishe Cup had played Vegas.

I had been in Las Vegas on vacation with my wife, Alice, and older son, Teddy.   I had played blackjack.

Monaco Motel. The Strattons stayed here in '62. Caught Red Skelton at the Sands nearby.

That was my second trip to Vegas. My first trip was in 1962, when a Vegas waitress predicted I (then-12 years old) would return to Nevada for my honeymoon.  That waitress was very wrong.

I prefer outdoorsy vacations.

On my latest trip I won $7.50 at blackjack at the Jokers Wild, then quit.  I could hardly breathe in the Jokers Wild –- or in any other Nevada casino — because of the cigarette smoke.  I hung around the casino parking lot, waiting for Teddy and Alice to finish up.

My favorite Las Vegas attraction is the Red Rock Canyon, which is similar to Zion National Park, but only 17 miles from Vegas.

The Red Rock performs daily in an original revue that is F’n Crazy!   Be a Part of  It!  Best Show in Vegas for the Past 900 Years!

***

Scouting locations for a Las Vegas School of Klezmer

It wouldn’t cost much for me to open a klezmer store.  I have several vacant storefronts.

I could put my store — call it the Klezmer Shack — next to the Bass Shop.  The Bass Shop doesn’t sell basses, but string players brake for it anyway.  The Bass Shop is a bait and tackle store.

Some of my  merchandise:

The Jewish Fake Book by Velvet Pasternak. Useful for anybody who wants to pass as a Jew.  You’ll learn your way around seltzer and freylekhs (horas).  Plus you’ll learn the Hebrew lyrics to  “Jerusalem of Gold”  and “Bashana Haba’a.”

Yiddishe Cup latkes.

Dave Tarras’ Freilachs, Bulgars, Horas — 22 clarinet tunes, handwritten by the master himself.  I got my copy in Delray Beach, Florida, from the widow of Harold Branch, the late New York bandleader.

Irwin Weinberger’s autoharp.  Please buy it!  (Irwin is Yiddishe Cup’s singer.)

Harold Branch’s Club Date Handbook.   You’ll learn what to play when the caterer wheels in the Viennese dessert cart at a 1968 New York bar mitzvah party.   For the flaming jubilee, play “Funiculi, Funicula.”   (For the main course — the roast beef — play “I’m an Old Cowhand.”)

Clarinet neck straps.  Hard to find.  We have them.

Clarinet travel bags.  Ours are imported from the Pilot truck stop, Lodi, Ohio.

Two Twistin The Freilach LPs, 1961.  Used.

Seven Kleveland Klezmorim Sound of the World’s Soul LPs, 1985.  Never opened.

Klezmer gum.

 —

Footnote:  There  is a Klezmer Shack website,  run by Ari Davidow, who is allowing me to use the name for my store, I think.
—
Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron (Ohio) 6:15 p.m. Sat., Dec. 31.
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Here’s a video by Kasumi,  who teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.  She won a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship for her vid work.  This video is Yiddishe Cup.

An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel.

Why ask me?  Why not ask Patel? I thought.  Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels.

The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.  He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.

I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not hitting the long ball.

He asked me about stocks.

This is what I knew:  My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.  John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, “The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.”  You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and when you sell.

In March 2009 the New York Times business-page headline was “Are We There Yet?”  There meant the stock market’s bottom.

In March 2009 the price/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.  (Trailing 10-years figure.)  The worldwide P/E was even lower, down to 10.  It was a good time to invest, but scary.

***

My Uncle Lou and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.  They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.  I was in.  I immediately ripped open all the packs.  I was 9.  This was my first speculative investment.  I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.  Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e., dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.

The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.  His wife and kids couldn’t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.  He didn’t have a job down there.  He didn’t have a house.  I hope he knew Patel.

—-
Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,” which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.  Went up a week ago.  The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland.

The title of Maury Feren’s autobiography is almost book-length: Wheeling & Dealing In My World, Including World War II Memories, by Maury Feren, Cleveland, Ohio’s Produce King.

Maury Feren, 2010. (Photo by Ron Humphrey)

Lettuce and tomatoes aren’t that compelling to me, but World War II is,  so I read the book.

Maury fought the war on two fronts: 1.) Europe and 2.) Europe  — against his fellow American soldiers.

Here are some chapter titles: “Another Bigot,” “I’ll Show You What a Dirty Jew Can Do,” “Anti-Semitism at Home and Abroad” and “More Anti-Semitism.”

An American soldier called Maury a “rag peddler.”  Maury “gave him a lesson in boxing that he might never forget.”

A mess hall server said to Maury, “Vot vould you lick? A piss of this, and a piss of that?”

Maury grabbed him by the throat.  “If you ever talk like that again to me, I’ll close your windpipe so you’ll never be able to talk again.”

Maury Feren (shirtless), 1944, w/ friend

Maury encountered German soldiers and civilians in Essen, Germany.  “I screamed at them in a Yiddish-kind-of-German about how despicable they were . . . ‘You are murders, baby killers, women killers . . . I am a Jew.  Look at me and see whether you want to kill me too.’”

Maybe I’ll read Maury’s chapter on chives.

Probably not.  Is there any ass-kicking in chives?
—-
Footnote: Maury, 96, is still kickin’.  Biz a hundert un tsvantsik, Maury.  (You should live to 120, Maury.)

—-
Jack Stratton, Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer, as Mushy Krongold:

 
The Intakes, a JCC boys’ club, should have met at the old Council Educational Alliance on Kinsman Road.  The Intakes was a throwback to a Depression-era settlement-house boys’ club.

The purpose of the Intakes was to keep teenage boys off the streets, which wasn’t too hard because we studied so hard we rarely went out.

The club president had a regular Saturday night excuse:  “I’ve got too much homework.  I can’t go out.”  On Saturday night?   One summer the club president landed a grant to write a report on the crystal structure of molecules.

The Intakes Club didn’t “intake” girls.  We were for the most part afraid of girls.  We played poker, miniature golf, bowled and held meetings.

Our advisor was a social worker from New York.  He often called us “schmucks,” which we found endearing.

We debated where to spend our money, which we earned by selling salamis and Passover macaroons.

Should we go to New York or Washington?

We went to both, on the Hound.  (Two different trips.)

In New York we went to the Statue of Liberty, saw Jeopardy! live and ate at Katz’s Deli.  I bought Existentialism Versus Marxism in a Village bookstore.  I haven’t finished it yet.

In Washington we met our congressman and pantsed an Intake back at the hotel.  We tried to post his pics on the ’net, but got an error message: Internet not invented yet.

Our congressman, Charles Vanik, had an administrative aide, Mark Talisman,  a small smart Jew who was just eight years older than us.  He seemed to know everything about the government.  He gave us a private meeting.  He was the puppet master for the entire suburban east side of Cleveland.

Talisman was an inspiration.  He made it out of the tough Harvard-Lee neighborhood to Harvard U.

We should have made Mark Talisman an honorary Intake.

We shouldn’t have taken those naked pictures.

The Intakes, 1967, poker game

Why do nursing-home administrators request 100-percent peppy music from performers?  Some residents want to hear contemplative tunes.

Why do eyeglass-frame adjusters have so much power over us?  Did they all get PhDs?  From where?  I.U.?

How come newspaper columnists don’t write about pet peeves anymore?  That’s annoying.

My wife took the electric toothbrush to Columbus, Ohio, on a business trip. The electric toothbrush — and the seltzer machine and Bose radio — are permanent attachments to the dwelling, Alice.

Why does Zagara’s grocery in Cleveland Heights sell only 12-packs of shabbat candles and not the 72-candle jumbo box?  Zagara’s Jewish Lites.

What about those phone solicitors from yours kids’ colleges who ask for money.  What are you supposed to say?   “Here’s another $50.  No problem.”

Why do “highly sensitive” people insist on telling you what bothers them?  That’s irritating.

When your computer crashes, why do you feel like your right hand fell off?  Why can’t you feel like a mosquito bit your ankle.

Who is nostalgic for mimeo machines?  Somebody should be.

Why do “sophisticated” Clevelanders brag about not reading the Plain Dealer?  They say, “I’ve lived in Cleveland for 20 years and never subscribed to the PD.  I read the New York Times. ”  Go home.

People who grow vegetables always serve arugula.  Why don’t they grow dates or figs?

Why do concertgoers at the Cleveland Orchestra applaud maniacally after every single piece?  The listeners nap for 54 minutes (Mahler Symphony #1), then give the conductor three curtain calls.  Applaud this!

If you want to talk about cars, first ask: “Do you want to talk about cars with me?”  Same goes for sports, TV shows and politics.

Which is preferable:  a) “He passed away.” or b) “He passed.”  Answer: “He passed away.”  Best answer:  c) “He died.”

Who was the curmudgeon — Harvey Pekar or Andy Rooney?  Coin toss.

Don’t complain about lousy cell phone service and long lines at the post office.  That’s modern life.   You wouldn’t get upset by a house sign that said the smith’s, would you?

My wife, Alice, and I were bumped from a plane at the Phoenix airport. We got free tickets, a hotel room and food vouchers.  Our son Teddy — who wasn’t with us — thought it was the greatest deal of all time.

I didn’t.  I wasn’t young.  I was not looking forward to a free night at the Phoenix Embassy Suites.   I had stuff to do at home.

Stop.  Maybe you do not like airport-travel horror stories.

Restart.  Maybe you do . . .

The Embassy Suites van driver was from Cleveland and had wrestled at John Marshall High.  We talked about the Milkovich family, the 1960s Maple Heights wrestling dynasty.  The driver took Alice and me to the Heard, the American Indian museum.  Any place within five miles of the hotel was a free ride.

I jogged along a canal by the hotel.  I didn’t have any clean clothes (my suitcase was on the plane to Cleveland), so I jogged shirtless, with long pants and brown leather shoes.  The Mexican-Americans along the canal gave me the once-over.

"Oye, Curly!"

Alice and I arrived at the Phoenix airport the next morning at 7 a.m. and didn’t get on the early flight.  I was ready to kill.

We paced the airport for a couple more hours.  There was no fresh air.

We got on a mid-morning flight and had to connect via Houston.

That’s my  story.

Your airport travel story is no doubt worse.

Don’t tell me.
—-
Irwin Weinberger, Jack Stratton and Bert Stratton are doing a klezmer show 2 p.m. Sun. (Nov. 20) at Shaker Heights Library, 16500 Van Aken Blvd.  Free.
—-
And here’s an original Klezmer Guy video:

At Yiddishe Cup gigs, I sometimes send photos to my daughter, Lucy.  Like of centerpieces or lighting.  I get the photos from my bandmates — some of whom are camera happy.

Lucy is an event planner in Chicago.

I was at a gig in Hunting Valley, Ohio, where the backyard tent was draped with strings of tiny candles.  I thought that was noteworthy.

I sent  this:

My daughter answered “pretty.”  One word.  Was that like “whatever”?

How about the white vinyl dance floor?  Workers were on their knees scrubbing that white dance floor.  My daughter wasn’t too impressed with that either:

Lucy knows about white flooring.  In Los Angeles she covered a parking deck with white carpet.   She bought 400 shoe-booties at Home Depot for workers, so they wouldn’t dirty the carpet before the guests arrived.

I didn’t get any photos of the horses at the Hunting Valley wedding.  The horses — in a stable by the party tent — went berserk during the upbeat recessional.  The horses, however, liked the stately and lyrical  “Erev Shel Shoshanim” (Evening of the Roses) — the processional.

Lucy used to ride horses.  Why didn’t anybody in the band get a pic of the horses?   Lucy would have been impressed with horses, I think.
—
These are the gigs Lucy works:

Have you read any good klezmer liner notes lately?

Probably not.

How about some bad notes? . . .

“The drummer has appeared in duo and trip [sic] settings.”

“This is what happens when Rumshinsky’s Theatre Bulgar is feed [sic] through Quincy Jones talking about Count Basie.”

“One[sic] the other side of the hall, a zedeh and bobe will spin in skeletal outlines the remembered steps of a tantz (dance) that their parents taught them …”

***

Here is the solution.  Hire Klezmer Guy Ink to write your liner notes.

If you submit to Klezmer Guy Ink, please follow these guidelines:

1. Don’t name your tunes.  We’ll do that.   Your first cut will be “Klezmer Lovin’,” “Hymie’s Town,” or “Romanian Shock #1.”  We’ll decide.

2. Don’t name your album.  We do that.  The choices: Intravenous Klezmer, 13 Jewish Hummingbirds and Black Curly Hair.  We pick.

3. We hire world-class musicians to punch up your sound. Our stable includes Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg and Eric Carmen (of the Raspberries).

4. We’ll come up with a pseudonym for a musician in your band.  This makes your album mysterious and more marketable.   Choices: M. Rogue Gemini, Hy Lowe and Jewboy Fuller.  We pick.

5. Your bio is tweaked.  Even if you’re a nebbish from Long Island, you visited your grandmother in Brooklyn at least once, right?  You’re from Brooklyn.

6. We’ll get you impressive music-school credentials.  We work with the Broadway School of Music.*

For your CD cover, we use red.  Why not?

Give Klezmer Guy Ink a call.  Some of our clients have been somewhat satisfied.
—-
*Broadway School of Music, 5415 Broadway Avenue, Cleveland.
—
A version of this post appeared in Zeek, the online “Jewish journal of thought and culture,” on December 21, 2010.

I lived in Beachwood at the Mark IV apartments (now the Hamptons) after college.  I was staying at my parents’ apartment.

My dad said, “I’m sure you’ll be a success some day.”

At what?  Whatever it was, I should do a good job of it.  My father never said, “What are your plans?  What do you see yourself doing in ten years?”  That would have been cruel.

My post-college days were hell, but not a bad hell.  My mother lined up blind dates for me.  The dates were usually daughters of my mom’s friends.  I took the girls to bars and restaurants and ordered 7&7s.  That was my total booze repertoire: 7&7.

I got feedback about the dates from my mother, who picked up tidbits through back channels, like at bridge games.  Some of the girls liked me, some didn’t. One date thought I was “a little weird.”

She was weird.  She had no business dragging me to her dad’s kangaroo court (his living room was plastered with World War II medals) for interrogation. What were my plans?  What did I do?

What’s an apricot sour?  That’s what she had ordered at the bar.

Meanwhile, my old-neighborhood pal Frankie (not his real name) wanted to go to a Corvette rally, starting at Manner’s Big Boy, Mayfield Heights.  Frankie had a brand-new 1974 ’Vette, 350 HP, headers, with all the emission controls removed.

No thanks, Frankie.

Frank said, “You think you’re too good for my ’Vette!  You’d prefer a VW bus with a hippie slut.  Hey, why not try real chicks and real cars.  Friday night at the Strongsville Holiday Inn, it’s crawling with it.  Chicks and ’Vettes.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’d rather be in Cleveland Heights!  Any city that has a bumper sticker like that is a losing proposition.”

After my six-month sentence at the Mark IV, I moved to Cleveland Heights, into a double, which I shared with Case Western Reserve graduate students.

Cleveland Heights worked.  I’ve been there ever since.

I haven’t seen Frank in more than 20 years.  He doesn’t hang around klezmer concerts, for one thing.

My future wife, Alice, knocked on the door of the Cleveland Heights double, looking for a room to rent.

Mom’s Dating Service became history right then.