The Oppenheimer Report - 12/27/10 Happy New Year!

Former Darwin Award Runner-up

Coming down the QEW the other day on my way to see Mom in Buffalo, I heard a story on the radio about some boneheads who had climbed down the Niagara Gorge in order to do mischievous things to the Maid of the Mist tour boats. Eventually, one of them had to be rescued, and the story reminded me of the idiots who used to climb challenging mountains around our hotel in Banff, then needed to be rescued when they realized they were in big trouble. I used to sit out on the balcony of our room and watch the rescue helicopters executing expensive retrievals off Rundle Mountain across the Bow Valley. I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, but thankfully most of them were only witnessed by my closest friends (who were equally blameworthy). And most of the stupid stuff I’ve done did not cost other people lots of money. So far, I haven’t had to explain to the policeman who saved my life why I was stupid enough to climb down the Niagara Gorge, in order to vandalize the Maid of the Mist, then to require assistance because I imperiled my life. In this the last report for 2010, I think it appropriate to once again touch on Darwin. No I’m not going to recount every one of my favorite Darwin Award candidates, those members of our society who have graciously removed themselves from the gene pool by killing themselves in some ridiculous and stupid way. I will point out that it’s one thing to accidentally jog off a steep cliff, but it’s quite another to weld jet engines to your Chevy, then launch yourself into the side of a mountain at 300 MPH. When I hear the word Darwinism, I think of survival of the fittest. Outlast, outsmart, outlive ... but out earn?

This morning, I read an article in The New York Times, my favorite leftist commie, Republican-hating, Pinko rag, and it was an “off with their heads” article about the skyrocketing compensation for the “top dogs” in our society. Some of the statistics, if in fact they are statistics, are staggering. For example, the median salary paid to a NY Yankee baseball player is $5.5 Million, or about seven times the inflation-adjusted median Yankee salary from 1990. In 1977, a CEO for a large corporation might have earned 50 times what one of his lowly workers made. Today, the highest paid CEO makes 1100 times what his workers make. Back in the 80’s during the decade of greed, Wall Street bonuses amounted to about $15,600 per person, but in 2007, just before the latest economic bubble burst, that bonus figure was more like $177,000 per person. The article goes on to suggest that this is all Ronald Reagan’s fault, but that these soaring compensations are also linked to free market economies and increased performance. A CEO is worth a lot more because he or she brings in more profits for the company and the shareholders. Is this really survival of the fittest, or have we all just gone mad? I never thought I’d be the one to suggest this, but perhaps democracy IS broken. We wonder why we’re getting so many unacceptable candidates in government, but if you can make $100 Billion inventing an internet-based social network, who wants to subject him (or her) self to the microscope of public office for a lousy couple hundred grand? Patriotism? Pthoohey! Dumb is the new leader (yeah, yeah, I know, Obama‘s smart) and while I will concede that many of the high earners in our society are better, faster, stronger, or more opportunistic than the rest of us lemmings, that does not necessarily entitle them to all of the lottery winnings. No, I’m not Robin Hood and I loathe the tail-wagging-the-dog government approach to the redistribution of wealth. What I might be suggesting is a little more flexible and reactive approach in the private sector in order to regulate executive and celebrity compensation. If you earn say $10 Million or more per year (perhaps excluding founders of companies), and your income is tied to fans or stockholders, then you are subject to periodic performance reviews, carried out by those responsible for your paycheck. Fail in any given quarter and your salary is docked, or if you really screw up, you get the boot. In Bernie Madoff’s case, your testicles are smeared with peanut butter then publicly removed by wolverines. If your movie does well, you get a piece of the action; if the movie bombs, you get your already inflated fee, but nothing else. There should be some cap on CEO salaries - and I have no idea what that should be - and bonuses should be a little more in line with reality. The more this compensation thing gets out of whack, the less vested the rest of us are in the American dream. There will always be stupid people in the world, and not all of them will be so accommodating as to remove themselves from the gene pool, but let’s not put all of them in charge of the cookie jar.

So, what does any of this have to do with Darwin? I’m not sure, but it seems as if the laws of Darwinism are not working. By all means, talent and excellence should be rewarded,  but let's not be ridiculous about it! The cream is not rising to the top, and there must be a better way to lure the truly gifted back to the table. Some of those people are delivering pizzas right now. As we usher in the infant 2011, let’s be better parents … and let’s start paying the right people something a little closer to what they’re worth.


“I rode the tiger, I rode the tiger, thought I was the talk of the town,

I rode the tiger, I rode the tiger, turns out I was just another money-grubbing clown…

I rode the tiger, I rode the tiger, I burned that candle right down,

I rode the tiger, I rode the tiger, I rode that tiger, right into the ground…



Cho:

Why is it everybody’s trying to find a way to make a million bucks?

Everybody’s rolling dice trying to grab a slice of lady luck …

I don’t need it, I don’t want a million bucks…”


I hope that 2011 brings back some of the sanity and common sense we seem to have misplaced! As I do every new year, I resolve to be a better person in general, to reduce my giant carbon footprint, and of course, to try not to say nasty things about the French. Happy New Year everyone. As Mr. Spock so wisely impored:  "Live long and prosper!"


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 12/20/10

Just in time for the holidays, Europe is being paralyzed by the worst snowstorm in decades, severely hampering all modes of transportation. I read that in Germany, 560 flights had been cancelled as of yesterday, and ice and snow brought London’s Heathrow Airport to a near standstill on Saturday. Fun fact that I did not know: Heathrow is the world’s busiest international airport. I read about these weather disasters in other parts of the world and I chuckle. The fact is, Europe was not adequately prepared for this snow emergency, and what occurred this past weekend would probably be considered an average winter day in Buffalo, or up where we live. Even in the southern United States, if they get four inches of snow, they consider it a snow day and close up. What a bunch of wimps! Up here in the Great White North, we’ve had a few lake effect dumpings, but nothing too severe yet. We’ve only been plowed out once so far this year.


When I was a little boy in Buffalo, in the winter, Mom would bundle me up in five layers of winter clothing, topped off with leggings and a huge jacket. Preparing me for the outdoors was a major project that took fifteen or twenty minutes, and when she was finished, I had so much stuff on I couldn’t move. She’d pick me up and throw me outside for an hour or so, and I’d sit in the snow, motionless until she came to get me. This fond memory occurred to me the other day as I donned my winter gear to do some snow blowing. I am now fifty-five years old and once again, I’m wearing leggings, five layers of clothing, and my genuine pica-fur-lined trooper hat (you know, the silly ones with the flaps that fold down). I’ve come full circle; I look like that little kid I used to be, immobilized in a snow bank. Today, as I finish writing this report, the lake is completely white, and soon the ice fishing huts will begin to dot the west shore. That will be my cue to take my first cruise on the frozen lake with our new ATV. That thing is pretty good in the snow; I took it for a little high speed spin around the neighborhood last weekend and it’s a lot of fun in the snow.


With only five shopping days left until reindeer-fest 2010, I read that a lot of Christmas shoppers are avoiding the mall madness and letting their fingers do the shopping. Online shopping is up considerably, and in keeping with the 21st Century trend to disconnect from society, buyers can now avoid the holiday retail craziness by shopping in the comfort of their own home. One word of warning, as I am sure some of you have discovered with online shopping: cyberspace is the Wild West. If you’re not dealing with a known retailer, caveat emptor. We recently tried to purchase a computer online, enticed by the ridiculously discounted price. After making the purchase, we were informed that the laptop was out of stock and would not be in stock for months. They didn’t even offer a suitable alternative. Know your vendor, or pick one that is highly rated for reliability. Speaking of holiday “ugliness”, I once saw one of Santa’s disheveled “surrogates” urinating against a Toyota in a mall parking lot near Buffalo. My goodness, think of the children! Once you put on that suit, I think you have a certain responsibility to uphold the code. No drugs, no molestation, no swearing, and certainly no peeing on other people’s cars. You’d think Santa would be a little more careful about the guys he hires to help out, but you know what they say about good help. Don’t even get me started about the elves.


At a loss for what to give this holiday season? If the stores are all out of computerized book thingies, salad shooters, and robot vacuum cleaners, perhaps giving a little love and affection, which I’m sure all of you give in abundance anyhow, will suffice. Remember, Ho, Ho Ho, and don’t be “a ho”. Happy Holidays, I’ll see you in 2011!


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 12/13/10

Last Wednesday, we lit the last candles of Chanukah, and it marked a significant anniversary. Thirty years ago last Wednesday, Mark David Chapman took John Lennon’s life in front of the Dakota in NYC. They showed a clip on the news the other night of Howard Cosell breaking the news to the world on Monday Night Football, December 9, 1980. Recently, I listened to a discussion about the meaning of the Lennon song “Imagine”. Some people said it was about anarchy, or socialism, and that it was anti-religious, and unpatriotic. To me, that song will always be a hopeful message about the possibility of peace, and it’s no surprise it is played frequently during Christmas time.

It’s not all that common that I am proud of something I wrote, or feel that it is worth repeating. Several years ago, I wrote a poem about an experience I had  around  the holidays, and I’d like to reprint it here so that any of my twelve loyal readers who missed it the first time around can read it now. In 2006, I spent most of the month of December living with my parents-in-law while my father-in-law fought to recover from a nearly fatal bout of the disease C. Difficile. I wrote about it in this blog, and some of you may even remember the poem. During the month or so that Shauna and I were living in that house, just about every major appliance and component malfunctioned and/or self destructed. The very first night Syd was in the hospital, the sewer backed up, leaving a mound of excrement and used toilet paper five feet in diameter on the laundry room floor. From there, it all went downhill. The fridge and the dishwasher died, the toilets crapped out (sorry, but that’s a fair description of what happened), the electrical service shorted out and needed to be replaced. The piece de resistance was when, during what I thought was going to be a routine service call, BOTH furnaces were declared dangerous and were “red tagged” to be shut down permanently. Both had cracked heat exchangers and were beginning to leak carbon monoxide into the house. The furnace guy was obligated to turn off the most dangerous of the two furnaces, but he reluctantly agreed to leave the other one running until we could arrange to have them both replaced. This little bit of bad news came about two weeks before Christmas, and left us scrambling desperately to replace the heating plants in the house in a big hurry. At one point, we were heating the main body of the house with four tiny electric space heaters, during one of the coldest Decembers on record. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was gravely ill, in quarantine at the hospital. I remember standing in an almost empty Home Depot one night in Toronto, there to pick up yet another replacement part for the latest thing that had broken in the house, and a Christmas song came over the loudspeaker. It was surreal, because I was so exhausted and beset by the ongoing problems in my family that I had completely forgotten that it was just days before Christmas. Looking back, it was almost funny, but at the time it was unbelievable. To follow is the poem I wrote 12/24/06 to commemorate the experience:

“The Night Before Christmas (In a Crumbling House)” …


Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not an appliance malfunctioned for me or my spouse
The sewer was augured, the fridge was replaced
The dishwasher’s new in its stainless steel case
The electrical panel is expanded and new,
Now we can turn on the microwave and not blow a fuse
The fifty year-old furnaces were torn out and scrapped
Now the new ones are efficient and they don’t blow out crap
The toilets that exploded have now been removed
The new ones are perfect with less water use
The carpets are up and the floors have been sanded
The bids are all in to have the bathroom expanded
The lights have been checked, and the faucets don’t leak
Indeed all of these problems are beyond our belief
And as I lay down to sleep having written this spoof
I’m just praying that Santa doesn’t screw up our roof


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 12/6/10

As winter creeps into the Great White North like a thief in the night, its arrival was a little less subtle in other parts of the country. Last week, Buffalo got smacked with a big winter storm and a heavy dose of lake effect snow. Where my mom lives, there was very little of the white stuff, but just south, in a narrow band, they got hammered. The storm even necessitated the closing of a stretch of the NYS Thruway. Out in Western Canada, there’s been plenty of snow already, but up here in the Great White North, we haven’t had all that much. I know it’s coming, and from time to time, I click on my Weather Channel website to check the Doppler radar, anxiously awaiting the streamers heading in from the west. I began writing this report on Saturday, and when I took Jasper out for her morning constitutional, there was a thin band of ice forming on the shores of our little lake. We’re all alone on this lake for most of the winter and it’s absolutely peaceful and beautiful right now. We’ll see how I feel come February.


Chanukah began December 1st and we lit the first candles as my father-in-law recited the prayers over the speaker phone from Toronto. I have always liked that tradition; it‘s even better when he’s in the same room. I don’t speak Hebrew, and when my father-in-law was not available on the second night, I googled “Chanukah prayers” so I could read the prayers phonetically. There is even an audio file available of a man reciting the prayers in Hebrew. Perhaps my laptop should have a bar mitzvah. Speaking of things Jewish, there was a big wildfire in Israel last week, outside Haifa in Northern Israel. My immediate reaction was that it was caused by Arabs playing with matches, but apparently that was not the case. High winds and draught conditions fueled the flames, and there were a surprising number of casualties.

Canadian actor Leslie Nielson died last week. I loved him in “Airport” and the “Naked Gun” movies, but sometimes it’s fun to watch an actor play a role that is completely the antithesis of what I’d expect him to play. There was a movie called “Nuts” starring Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfus, in which Nielson played a cameo, and it was entirely different than anything I had ever seen him do. The movie was about a high end prostitute, played by Streisand (a bit of a stretch), who was on trial for murdering one of her Johns. In the scene, Nielson played the John who got a little too frisky, and Streisand bores him to death with her liberal nonsense (just kidding). It must be strange for an actor to become type cast as a comic or a bad guy. For a long time, I had a lot of trouble seeing Henry Winkler as anything but “The Fonz” though he’s certainly a versatile actor in dramatic roles as well. Jack Palance used to play a lot of bad guys when I was a kid, then I saw him in the comedy “City Slickers” and he was pretty funny.

The big news last week was the WikiLeaks exposure of classified information,  likely to embarrass a lot of people worldwide and undermine various diplomatic efforts. Depending on whom you believe, WikiLeaks (which is, by the way, a website) founder Julian Assange is either a demon or an angel. Is he the “Robin Hood of Information” or just some traitor endangering our national security? Does anybody remember when Geraldo got in trouble during the second Gulf War by divulging sensitive logistics information on T.V.? I don’t know enough about Assange to judge him, but I read an article in The Toronto Star that makes him out to be pretty strange. Right now he is holed up in Britain, but he can’t hide there for very long. A lot of high ranking government types want his balls on a platter, if they catch him. One thing this WikiLeaks scandal does is to remind me how uncontrollable the internet really is. Some argue that all information should be public, and we all suspect that some governments abuse or mishandle the information they obtain. What will happen when one of these “liberators” starts working in a country like China? I’m guessing he or she will end up in the Kang Pao Chicken. Assange probably crossed the line, but in this age of information (and misinformation),what would happen if the world had no secrets? Perhaps it’s naïve to assume it would be a better place.

Merry Eighteen -Shopping-Days-To-Go. Ho Figgin’ Ho … and don’t be one (a “ho” that is).


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED