Hollywood Beach has a boardwalk 1.83 miles long, almost the same length as Roosevelt Island in the East River of the New York archipelago where I lived for the last thirty three years. As a former New Yorker I like lots of people on the street and even now as the sun sets the boardwalk is busy, bicycles and tricycles, runners and swimmers, acrobats and old people like me but with walkers.
Forgot how the ocean can float your boat. I am wearing a baseball cap all the time even now as I await the next three inch swell, never liked any kind of hat. Helke says I will need it as she handed it to me as I left New York and I do or I think I do. It's a cover-up narcissistic thing I do even in the surf.
It is a bathtub, warm and liquidy, my hands are under my head as I watch the sun set thru my toes and the palm trees back on shore. In the airspace of my half open right eye a turbo-prop beats its way quickly down toward the sun and Ft. Lauderdale airport followed later by a heavy and then another intermittently grinding their way so slowly, landing gear coming down, gray silhouettes against the Eastern mist. I wonder why gray, why not glinting yellow and orange from that setting sun.
South of the boardwalk tall condos rise. I have looked at some of them, one a foreclosure that the bank has priced below market was full of bargain hunters one of whom will outbid the rest and find themselves underwater next year. Well that is my opinion. The banks are keeping a lot off the market to manage the price but their inventories are still growing and sooner or later they will have to dump. Again my opinion. I have been wrong before.
The boardwalk is low rise, lower class million dollar properties. Low class if you think Trump is high class. Personally I would not want to live within a mile of any building with the Trump name on it, to high class for me. They say they are building a Margaritaville in the middle of the boardwalk. I like that though I am not a drinker.
When we had our photo lab in New York, I had a partner, we did a large Ciba color print of the front facade of Grand Central with a very large banner draped across it saying Trump. He was renovating Grand Central and this must have been part of the deal. The classic Trump touch.
I had to hang the print over Trumps desk in his fourth floor offices across the street from the still unfinished Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. The young Donald supervised and complimented and shook my hand after but that is when my opinion of him started to drop from hero to the unfathomable depths. There would be no Trump Tower on the boardwalk of Hollywood Beach. At least I hoped not since I was serious about buying a place here. After all somewhere on Hollywood Beach the body of Candy Mossier's multi-millionaire husband had lain bleeding from his coke bottle wound back in the day when I was so naive, 1964 maybe, two years before I would first arrive. Now that scene adds class to the boardwalk of Hollywood Beach, a little history.
Naive? I knew so much more then, twenty, totally clueless now, sixty-seven.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Jobs
I joined Twitter near its inception sent a twit and another the other day I think. Same with Facebook, joined and then nothing. Getting to old I guess but the other day I went on Facebook and updated my account by listing most of the jobs I have had.
Interesting how many jobs you can have in 67 years, Worked in a Coke plant, the stuff they feed blast furnaces with to make iron and steel. Civil War vintage plant with a blacksmith's shop to make individual tools for workers like me. Most dangerous job I ever saw including those on TV today. Maybe with the exception of TV tower technicians. That is a dangerous job but at least it is not as filthy as a Coke plant.
And there was the job selling Paradomes, eight screen doors connected in a circle with a circus top and one door which opened. I was hired because I was 6' 3" and tall enough to put it up. And that job took me to Florida in 1966
And there was Candy Moisser as old as my mother but looking older, I being 22. My mother was a beauty but Candy was trying to be painted Hollywood and not Hollywood Beach Florida where they, she and her boyfriend, killed her millionaire husband by bashing in his head with a coke bottle. She and her lawyers were there in the bar on Key Biscayne every night. She looked at me with a dull stare. She got off even though her boyfriend's bloody hand-print was found right on the counter next to the body. He did to. Very strange days.
Forty-five years later and here I was living on Hollywood Beach Florida. Living here is the last job I probably will have and the one that will pay me the best, around half a million just for living here. Candy would like that.
Maybe if I am lucky I will find a cure for cancer, that could be my last job. Pay is good. Read today that a cure for cancer would be worth fifty trillion dollars for the US or $100 trillion for the whole world. Even a one percent cure for cancer would be worth $500 billion just in the US. And I am working on it. Right I never had a course in Biology but it is not always what you know but what you don't know that counts. For example I don't know that I can't cure cancer same as the guys that invented Kodachrome. They didn't know that everyone in the photo business knew that the theory of Kodachrome was not doable. If they had just asked we would never have been besotted with Kodachrome all those years and Paul Simon would be shy one song.
There is a good chance that my cancer cure idea will generate a clinical trial by a major drug company this year. You never know where a cure will come from, this one will be a big surprise. If I live long enough I plan to take a course in Biology so I can better understand my cure.
Then there is broadcasting. When my photo lab failed, made large Cibachrome murals and other stuff, we were the best but that was before computer driven photocomps and Ink Jet mural printing appeared, that was when I got into broadcasting. Didn't know a thing but two years later or less I was an expert witness before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications with the august Billy Tauzin its leader and the question at hand the modulation to be used for a digital TV transition in the US.
Billy along with his cohorts choose wrong for us, probably right for himself, and we got stuck with 8-VSB the worst modulation in the world. I was there to support DVB-T, the European standard, the best modulation at the time though now maybe the Chinese have the best. Helped Intel test that modulation a few years ago. Classify that job as unpaid.
Today, 11 years later, broadcasters and the FCC are trying to find a way to now transition again to you guessed it, either the current DVB-T, DVB-T2 or the Chinese standard. I told anyone who would listen then, 2000, or later that the US would have to transition to a modern standard that worked sooner or later. Told Kennard to his face and the laughter of a large audience. Told Powell through his minions, he would not see us. Told Tauzin but he was to busy making an exit from Congress to the green of drug land. Told most of the FCC commissioners, department heads and top technicians and many agreed with me but could or would not do anything. Told Congresspersons and Senators to no avail. Can you call that a job? Worked hard for years but did not get paid until now. Now it is going to pay off.
Almost got a job in Nam. Radio room operator in the central highlands. No I did not know a thing about operating a radio room. Also didn't know that a bribe of $1500 was required. Didn't get the job. My army draftee intelligence job almost got me a job with Air America (the CIA), partly because of my intelligence background and partly because I knew where to go to ask for the job, the Vientiane Laos airport where somebody in a quiet hanger talked to me for an hour or so about the war recession and how they were laying off. That was 1970 maybe July. Anyway the radio room got over-run a year later and a lot of guys died. One job I lucked out and didn't get. Add the oil platform roughneck job off Sumatra I didn't get while in Bangkok. That was probably a bad idea to.
Interesting how many jobs you can have in 67 years, Worked in a Coke plant, the stuff they feed blast furnaces with to make iron and steel. Civil War vintage plant with a blacksmith's shop to make individual tools for workers like me. Most dangerous job I ever saw including those on TV today. Maybe with the exception of TV tower technicians. That is a dangerous job but at least it is not as filthy as a Coke plant.
And there was the job selling Paradomes, eight screen doors connected in a circle with a circus top and one door which opened. I was hired because I was 6' 3" and tall enough to put it up. And that job took me to Florida in 1966
And there was Candy Moisser as old as my mother but looking older, I being 22. My mother was a beauty but Candy was trying to be painted Hollywood and not Hollywood Beach Florida where they, she and her boyfriend, killed her millionaire husband by bashing in his head with a coke bottle. She and her lawyers were there in the bar on Key Biscayne every night. She looked at me with a dull stare. She got off even though her boyfriend's bloody hand-print was found right on the counter next to the body. He did to. Very strange days.
Forty-five years later and here I was living on Hollywood Beach Florida. Living here is the last job I probably will have and the one that will pay me the best, around half a million just for living here. Candy would like that.
Maybe if I am lucky I will find a cure for cancer, that could be my last job. Pay is good. Read today that a cure for cancer would be worth fifty trillion dollars for the US or $100 trillion for the whole world. Even a one percent cure for cancer would be worth $500 billion just in the US. And I am working on it. Right I never had a course in Biology but it is not always what you know but what you don't know that counts. For example I don't know that I can't cure cancer same as the guys that invented Kodachrome. They didn't know that everyone in the photo business knew that the theory of Kodachrome was not doable. If they had just asked we would never have been besotted with Kodachrome all those years and Paul Simon would be shy one song.
There is a good chance that my cancer cure idea will generate a clinical trial by a major drug company this year. You never know where a cure will come from, this one will be a big surprise. If I live long enough I plan to take a course in Biology so I can better understand my cure.
Then there is broadcasting. When my photo lab failed, made large Cibachrome murals and other stuff, we were the best but that was before computer driven photocomps and Ink Jet mural printing appeared, that was when I got into broadcasting. Didn't know a thing but two years later or less I was an expert witness before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications with the august Billy Tauzin its leader and the question at hand the modulation to be used for a digital TV transition in the US.
Billy along with his cohorts choose wrong for us, probably right for himself, and we got stuck with 8-VSB the worst modulation in the world. I was there to support DVB-T, the European standard, the best modulation at the time though now maybe the Chinese have the best. Helped Intel test that modulation a few years ago. Classify that job as unpaid.
Today, 11 years later, broadcasters and the FCC are trying to find a way to now transition again to you guessed it, either the current DVB-T, DVB-T2 or the Chinese standard. I told anyone who would listen then, 2000, or later that the US would have to transition to a modern standard that worked sooner or later. Told Kennard to his face and the laughter of a large audience. Told Powell through his minions, he would not see us. Told Tauzin but he was to busy making an exit from Congress to the green of drug land. Told most of the FCC commissioners, department heads and top technicians and many agreed with me but could or would not do anything. Told Congresspersons and Senators to no avail. Can you call that a job? Worked hard for years but did not get paid until now. Now it is going to pay off.
Almost got a job in Nam. Radio room operator in the central highlands. No I did not know a thing about operating a radio room. Also didn't know that a bribe of $1500 was required. Didn't get the job. My army draftee intelligence job almost got me a job with Air America (the CIA), partly because of my intelligence background and partly because I knew where to go to ask for the job, the Vientiane Laos airport where somebody in a quiet hanger talked to me for an hour or so about the war recession and how they were laying off. That was 1970 maybe July. Anyway the radio room got over-run a year later and a lot of guys died. One job I lucked out and didn't get. Add the oil platform roughneck job off Sumatra I didn't get while in Bangkok. That was probably a bad idea to.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The Treatment
Only two days after my first infusion in Hollywood Beach I decided I had to get out. Had a list of things to do. My 1998 Ranger pickup needed dash and left front running and turn signal lights and I went to get them. There was a Waffle House a mile or so further out and I would try to eat also. It was Saturday morning.
My mind was addled, I don't think I had combed my hair, what was left of it, and with my tooth challenged grin, I avoided grinning, must have looked the bum. Bum service is poor in an auto parts store and the clerk I choose tried to sell me expensive head light bulbs. Correct bulbs in hand I re-entered a very hot Florida and found my Waffle House.
Their was a line but I could see a seat open at the counter and wiggled and excused my way to it. The cash register was on my right shoulder, the dish washer station was directly and eighteen inches in front of me and the room was packed with four languages being spoken in earnest at an appropriate decibel level.
The director stood at the grill with his back to me, always, ten feet to my front and five to the right. First he turned waves of bacon on the grill to his left and then back to the burners his hands lifted again and again in a head bowed benediction to a wire basket above his head where he found two eggs again and again, broke them in little skillets while giving soft orders to his right. There was chaos behind him, fifteen people with a purpose and plates scurried around in that small place.
A Waffle House is not that big and with people spilling in the door of many races it still was well under control. It had a culture, people knew what to expect, there was order in the chaos. " Listen honey", that meant the person on the phone was a male, females were darling, "Listen honey we have people out the door we aren't taking orders over the phone, thanks honey." Klunk! The streaked blond was maning the cash register and phone and chewing something non regulation. Then a black girl, my waitress was over her right shoulder and taking the next ticket while the blond moved left and was washing dishes with dispatch in front of me.
A quick look and then another, longer, "You all right honey?" Not is everything all right. "Everything is fine", she had seen the rivulets on my face but took my answer in stride with a little nod of OK then. After all I was eating my waffle, my mouth was full, I had finished my eggs, bacon and toast, I would not finish the waffle.
You could see results from the chaos. Plates appeared with just the right stuff in front of the right people and everyone behind that counter was purposeful, busy and happy. South Florida had one great Waffle House and I was crying.
Men don't cry at least not from my generation and I was keeping it in except for the tears, my insides were cramping and I tried to breathe thru the waffle but I was crying. Crying with unadulterated joy at just being alive in that wonderful Waffle House with all those wonderful people on a hot Saturday morning, sick as a dog with a thin plastic tube connecting me to the bottle in my right front pocket.
My mind was addled, I don't think I had combed my hair, what was left of it, and with my tooth challenged grin, I avoided grinning, must have looked the bum. Bum service is poor in an auto parts store and the clerk I choose tried to sell me expensive head light bulbs. Correct bulbs in hand I re-entered a very hot Florida and found my Waffle House.
Their was a line but I could see a seat open at the counter and wiggled and excused my way to it. The cash register was on my right shoulder, the dish washer station was directly and eighteen inches in front of me and the room was packed with four languages being spoken in earnest at an appropriate decibel level.
The director stood at the grill with his back to me, always, ten feet to my front and five to the right. First he turned waves of bacon on the grill to his left and then back to the burners his hands lifted again and again in a head bowed benediction to a wire basket above his head where he found two eggs again and again, broke them in little skillets while giving soft orders to his right. There was chaos behind him, fifteen people with a purpose and plates scurried around in that small place.
A Waffle House is not that big and with people spilling in the door of many races it still was well under control. It had a culture, people knew what to expect, there was order in the chaos. " Listen honey", that meant the person on the phone was a male, females were darling, "Listen honey we have people out the door we aren't taking orders over the phone, thanks honey." Klunk! The streaked blond was maning the cash register and phone and chewing something non regulation. Then a black girl, my waitress was over her right shoulder and taking the next ticket while the blond moved left and was washing dishes with dispatch in front of me.
A quick look and then another, longer, "You all right honey?" Not is everything all right. "Everything is fine", she had seen the rivulets on my face but took my answer in stride with a little nod of OK then. After all I was eating my waffle, my mouth was full, I had finished my eggs, bacon and toast, I would not finish the waffle.
You could see results from the chaos. Plates appeared with just the right stuff in front of the right people and everyone behind that counter was purposeful, busy and happy. South Florida had one great Waffle House and I was crying.
Men don't cry at least not from my generation and I was keeping it in except for the tears, my insides were cramping and I tried to breathe thru the waffle but I was crying. Crying with unadulterated joy at just being alive in that wonderful Waffle House with all those wonderful people on a hot Saturday morning, sick as a dog with a thin plastic tube connecting me to the bottle in my right front pocket.
The Move
I just moved from New York City to Florida. Hollywood Beach just south of Ft. Lauderdale. It's June and its hot and muggy. I drove. In the past when I have driven south I always was on the lookout for the first Waffle House. Ate my first grits at a Waffle House.
Somewhere in Georgia there it was. I was the only customer. It was good. Had to make some noise to get someone to take my money. Other than gas this was my first stop since DC and the only such stop till Ft. Lauderdale. That night just north of Ft. Lauderdale and well past Midnight on I-95 a gray ghost appeared with a high whine, for a second, no lights, the rider leaning to the right a bike slipped past at over 200 mph.
Florida, South Florida, has changed since Arthur Godfrey ruled and I was there selling Paradomes to Montgomery Ward. Murf the Surf had recently found a home in New York after being caught with the Museum of Natural History's Star of India Diamond. His beach bum friends were all still there on Key Biscayne along with Candy Mossier and her defense team and the press. My boss, former member of Murf's posse and me were there too every night. He had flown to Miami while he had me drive a Ford Falcon station wagon, no air, with a Paradome in the back. The restuarant was packed and everyone stayed late eying each other. Candy was the star for awhile then attention drifted to stories of big fast boats, rum running, breaking and entering on the inter-coastal and women.
Florida was hot then too but much more laid back. Boss had a gun runner friend also with Roy Rogers and Nixon as neighbors on Key Biscayne, large house. A modern day Huntsman look-alike of 50 something with a 22 year old Daisy Mae friend, correctly outfitted, who served us spiked lemonade or something that made me very jealous of all things gun runner. His current trade was to Selma.
Somewhere in Georgia there it was. I was the only customer. It was good. Had to make some noise to get someone to take my money. Other than gas this was my first stop since DC and the only such stop till Ft. Lauderdale. That night just north of Ft. Lauderdale and well past Midnight on I-95 a gray ghost appeared with a high whine, for a second, no lights, the rider leaning to the right a bike slipped past at over 200 mph.
Florida, South Florida, has changed since Arthur Godfrey ruled and I was there selling Paradomes to Montgomery Ward. Murf the Surf had recently found a home in New York after being caught with the Museum of Natural History's Star of India Diamond. His beach bum friends were all still there on Key Biscayne along with Candy Mossier and her defense team and the press. My boss, former member of Murf's posse and me were there too every night. He had flown to Miami while he had me drive a Ford Falcon station wagon, no air, with a Paradome in the back. The restuarant was packed and everyone stayed late eying each other. Candy was the star for awhile then attention drifted to stories of big fast boats, rum running, breaking and entering on the inter-coastal and women.
Florida was hot then too but much more laid back. Boss had a gun runner friend also with Roy Rogers and Nixon as neighbors on Key Biscayne, large house. A modern day Huntsman look-alike of 50 something with a 22 year old Daisy Mae friend, correctly outfitted, who served us spiked lemonade or something that made me very jealous of all things gun runner. His current trade was to Selma.
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