{"id":12379,"date":"2013-01-02T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=12379"},"modified":"2013-07-31T18:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T22:34:40","slug":"i-cry-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/02\/i-cry-a-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"I CRY A LOT"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Charlie Chaplin<\/strong><\/span> brings me to tears.\u00a0 Louis Armstrong and Beethoven do too.\u00a0 T.S. Eliot — yes, I know he didn\u2019t like Jews — but you can’t deny his greatness.\u00a0<\/em> For instance, \u201cHumankind can not bear too much reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, reality blows — as we used to say in junior high. (We\u00a0said the “blows” part.)<\/p>\n

\"\"

Art?<\/p><\/div>\n

I escape to the arts.\u00a0 I escape to this:<\/p>\n

Fire escapes<\/strong><\/span> have to be painted every year in Cleveland, or they rust.<\/p>\n

I used to be shallower, vainer, younger and facetious.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m all that, and older.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking of getting elevator shoes. A couple inches might change my life.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t<\/strong><\/span> like ferrets.<\/p>\n

Go ahead, indict me.<\/p>\n

Indict me on this too: Anglomania, Jewmania and prickliness.<\/p>\n

Downton Abbey<\/em> — the TV show — is terrific.\u00a0 Everybody is so taciturn and proper.\u00a0 Nobody runs his or her mouth.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s a<\/strong><\/span> Jew?\u00a0 That’s my second obsession.\u00a0 I annually debate whether Brubeck was a Jew.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0 Or was Chaplin Jewish?\u00a0 No,\u00a0 he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Prickliness, that’s a universal trait.\u00a0 I cut off a man’s position in the check-out line at Dave\u2019s supermarket. The man said,\u00a0 \u201cWhat you doin\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ahead of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

“No, you<\/strong><\/span> ain\u2019t. You moved!\u201d<\/p>\n

I had moved for a second!\u00a0 I had left my cart in one line and walked to another line to see which was shorter.<\/p>\n

I said “you win” to the man, and let him in front. He got out of the store before me!<\/p>\n

I’m looking for elevator shoes.<\/p>\n

I cry a lot.<\/p>\n

—
\nSIDE B<\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This one is real.\u00a0 The above post is half real.
\n<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

FIRING SABINA<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy<\/strong><\/span> to fire a drunken building manager, or a thieving one, but it\u2019s hard to fire a manager who is only lousy.<\/p>\n

For instance, he doesn\u2019t answer the phone quickly enough, or he doesn\u2019t clean enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I thought about firing Sabina; I had hired her husband, not her, and her husband had skipped out on her. She was shoveling snow, cutting grass, and climbing ladders. It wasn\u2019t her strong suit; she had majored in Russian lit at a Russian university.<\/p>\n

My tenants<\/strong><\/span> reported negative things about her.<\/p>\n

That helped — me.<\/p>\n

I asked a tenant how the manager was performing, and he said, \u201cI hate her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you<\/strong><\/span> hate me too?\u201d I said, trying to establish a baseline on his \u201chate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He didn\u2019t hate me. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t clean, she has her kids cutting the grass, and she doesn\u2019t tell us anything — when anything is going to get fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

I fired her.<\/p>\n

Then I rehired her. She couldn\u2019t get welfare because she had no green card. I let her stay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Avon calling<\/p><\/div>\n

She found<\/strong><\/span> a boyfriend \u2013 a guy in Avon Lake – and moved out.<\/p>\n

I owe that guy in Avon Lake.<\/p>\n

—
\n“Sabina” is a pseudonym.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlie Chaplin brings me to tears.\u00a0 Louis Armstrong and Beethoven do too.\u00a0 T.S. Eliot — yes, I know he didn\u2019t like Jews — but you can’t deny his greatness.\u00a0 For instance, \u201cHumankind can not bear too much reality.\u201d Yes, reality blows — as we used to say in junior high. (We\u00a0said the “blows” part.) I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake-profiles","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12379"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15687,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions\/15687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}