The Oppenheimer Report - 7/25/11

Oh, what a sad day for baseball! Former Toronto Blue Jay pitcher Roger “The Rocket” Clemens just got a free pass when his perjury trial was declared a mistrial last week. He now joins Casey Anthony in the “get-out-of-jail-free” department. Drug use in pro sports; what a surprise. If Roger did use steroids and lie about it on the stand with impunity, that’s a regrettable miscarriage of justice. What is even more regrettable is that this mistrial has probably cost the U.S. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. I read an article last week stating that the Clemens trial involved 103 federal agents, five prosecutors, and 229 investigative reports made at 72 different locations. Mega-hitter Barry Bonds was convicted of steroid use and to what end? It might have been a moral victory for the prosecution, but the penalty was about as stiff as a parking ticket, and it took almost a decade to achieve that victory. How many countless millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money did Clinton’s enemies spend trying to bring him down after Blowjobgate? There was the whole Whitewater investigation, which went on forever, and I wouldn’t exactly say they “nailed” him. They sent Martha Stewart to jail for some trumped up insider trading charge, but Clemens walks? That just doesn’t seem right. As for cleaning up the game of baseball, or any other professional sport for that matter, good luck with that. I love it when politicians step into the limelight and try to legislate morality. That’s always a “win-win” for America. Then, I read the other day that former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn may also walk because the woman who accused him of rape has been discredited. So let me get this straight; Rape, murder, perjury, and pillaging pension funds, are defendable crimes, as long as you are rich, or powerful, or some hotshot lawyer wants to make his or her reputation by winning your case. Justice may be blind, but apparently she does have a checking account. Once again I refer to the French Revolution. Audible groan of righteous indignation.

British bad girl and multi-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse finally succumbed to her demons and expired a few days ago. Can’t say I didn’t see THAT coming. While there is no official cause of death, a Winehouse friend (dealer?) said she had probably taken a “dodgy” tab of Ecstasy. I love the reasoning behind this; the friend said that Winehouse could drink and snort cocaine all night long without a problem, and she would have been just fine if she hadn’t taken that impure E. Let that be a lesson to you kids; make sure your Ecstasy is pure before you combine it with copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine. Winehouse now has the dubious honor of joining Club 27, the growing list of gifted musicians who died at age 27. Also members of the club: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Rolling Stone Brian Jones (1942-1969), and Grateful dead founder Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (1946-1973). Because I have a morbid fascination with celebrity crash-and-burns, I always want to know the cause of death. Sometimes it’s just a bizarre accident. Club 27 member Dennis Boon, lead singer of the punk band The Minutemen, fell out of a van as it made a sharp turn and broke his neck. Malcolm Hale, one of the original members of the 60s band Spanky and Our Gang, died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty space heater. Hardly a rock star death. Fun fact: Mamas and the Papas singer “Mama Cass” Elliot died of a heart attack in a London flat she was renting from Harry Nilsson, and not, as the urban myth goes, by choking on a ham sandwich. Spooky coincidence: The Who drummer and wild man Keith Moon died in the same flat four years later, AND both Moon and Elliot were 32 when they died. Maybe there should be a Club 32.

Anders Behring Breivik, a right wing nutcase from Oslo, Norway killed about 93 people, some in an Oklahoma- style bomb attack in Oslo, and around 85 people he shot to death while impersonating a police officer on a nearby island. We don't know yet whether other people were involved in the attack. Much was made of the slow response of the SWAT team called out to apprehend Breivik, but how do you anticipate an attack as out-of-the-blue and so obviously well-planned out as Breivik’s? Like Loughner in Arizona and that Cho guy at Virginia Tech, Breivik is the most recent time bomb to explode. I found it interesting that, according to Norwegian law, if convicted, Breivik can only receive a maximum of 21 years for his crime.

Do you think Lance Armstrong was juiced when he won all those Tour de Frances? If they wanted to prove Clemens was “juicing” wouldn’t his testicles tell the truth? Talk amongst yourselves.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 7/18/11

We love our Miniature Schnauzer Jasper, so much so that we named our house after her: Jasper Bark Lodge. It’s a play on the name of a famous lodge in Jasper, Alberta called the Jasper Park Lodge. Anybody familiar with the breed knows Schnauzers are stubborn dogs with a lot of attitude, and this can be somewhat trying at times. Every morning as soon as Jasper wakes up, she makes a bee line for the big picture windows in the front of the house so she can “hunt” the squirrels and chipmunks. When she sees one, she goes absolutely berserk, hopping up and down frantically and screaming at the top of her lungs. We’ve tried several “dog whisperer” techniques to break her of this annoying habit, with limited success. Now, when confronted with a rodent outside, and with the proper signal from her alpha leader (me), she will stifle her craziness and instead let out marginally less annoying moaning and howling sounds. Sometimes she picks up one of her toys and barks with it in her mouth, thus muffling the sound. That always makes me laugh. Perhaps we are screwing her up by altering her natural instincts, but isn’t that what family is all about?

Citizen Kane is playing out in real life, and we may be re-examining the freedom of the press issue after Gazillionaire Rupert Murdoch again found himself in hot water. One of his more popular scandal rags, Britain’s News of the World, was accused of serious phone hacking abuses, and Murdoch finally shut it down last week. Now, the question is how will this affect the rest of his media empire. Pioneer journalist Edward R. Morrow must be rolling in his grave after these allegations of intrusive and unethical reporting. News of the World is accused of, among other things, hacking into the phone records of a teenage murder victim, and deleting phone records vital to the police investigation. We don’t seem to mind so much when tabloids besmirch the reputations of celebrities and penis-tweeting politicians, but when they go after the man on the street, this apparently crosses that very faint line of ethical journalism. Clearly some of these tabloid stories are over the top, and this latest charge is a wake up call to remind us how bad some tabloid indiscretions have become. Sadly, no one ever lost money overestimating the public‘s appetite for yellow journalism, and there seems to be an insatiable demand for lurid details. I wonder what if any impact this will have on Murdoch’s U.S. holdings, which include Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal? My favorite newspaper, which I don’t believe is a Murdoch publication, is The Weekly World News. Their in depth coverage of the Bat Boy sightings in Texas was nothing short of Pulitzer-worthy. If Shauna has not yet thrown it out, I probably still have my Weekly World News “Bat Boy Lives!” tee shirt. I love this stuff: “Woman Killed by Mink Coat” … “Clinton Endorsed by Space Aliens” … that sort of thing. My favorite headline, which was on my kitchen wall for years: “Man Loses Testicle Down Hot Tub Drain.” And speaking of media coverage …

A few reflections on the Casey Anthony verdict. Everybody is upset because this woman got away with murdering her little girl, but none of us really knows what happened. We all think we do, because we have had a steady stream of experts telling us what might have happened. She was tried in the court of public opinion. Clearly she was not a great mom, and probably not a good person in general. Some jurors interviewed after the verdict said that there was reasonable doubt; some even felt that Casey’s father George was suspicious. Sounds to me like the system worked. Perhaps if the prosecution hadn’t gone for Murder One, there might have been hope for a conviction. What I find bizarre about this whole thing is that, probably because of all the media attention, Casey Anthony is now a kind of celebrity, albeit a notorious one. She has apparently been offered a book deal and she could make some serious money because of her notoriety. Bonfire of the Insanities. Perhaps we should start licensing the rights to serial killer’s names. Wouldn't you go to a fast food restaurant called J. Dahmer’s?

Final note … a moment of silence for Betty Ford, who passed on last week. I’ve got no snide remarks about that. Hats off to Betty for her humility, and for shining a light on the huge problem of alcohol and drug abuse in America.

I want to know how a man’s balls can be sucked down a hot tub drain. I think maybe we need an Edward R. Morrow Clinic for recovering tabloid writers.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 7/11/11

Fourth of July weekend I was called down to Buffalo unexpectedly to attend the funeral of my Aunt Bobbi. She wasn’t really my aunt, more of a distant relative, but she might as well have been. She and her brother lived with my maternal grandparents after their parents died prematurely. I saw her and her family a lot when I was younger, but not so frequently over the past 35 years. Bobbi was big on family, and she was always very generous and kind to me and to Shauna. At the reception after the funeral, there was a collage of old photos of Bobbi and the extended Lewin family, and each picture spoke volumes. Of late I have been surrounded, sometimes overwhelmed, by the complications inherent in dealing with my aging loved ones. My dad passed a few years ago, Mom is very old and sick, we just spent a year caring for one of Shauna’s elderly aunts who passed last year, and Shauna’s parents are now in their upper eighties. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past five years dealing with nursing care, medical emergencies, hospital beds, walkers, wheelchairs, searching for the ultimate adult diaper, and the odd behavior that so often accompanies my octogenarian and nonagenarian charges. For the past five or ten years, Bobbi had been sick, and most of the time near the end she was confined to a wheelchair equipped with an oxygen tank. I looked at those pictures at her funeral and was reminded of the woman who had lived a full life, complete with all the travel, family drama, joy, heartbreak, and laughter most of us experience. She and her brother Morry were great story tellers, and they told me tales about my grandmother and grandfather that I never heard from my Mom. That oral history, embellished as it was, gave me a little more perspective on the people my grandparents were. I never knew my maternal grandmother and my grandfather died when I was three . To my mother they were saints, but to Bobbi and Morry, they were fallible human beings. Somewhere between my mom’s recollections and the stories from Bobbi and Morry, I got a clearer picture of who my grandparents were. In my collection of family photographs I recall one picture of Bobbi as a young woman lying on the Lake Erie beach with some of her pals. I think of all the parties and good times I had on that same stretch of sand. Four generations of my family grew up at that beach house. Like my discussion several months ago about the passing of some high school classmates, this death kind of shook me up. A hundred Kodachrome moments came flooding through my head; ancient history in color and black and white. My father as a younger man, wearing his Stetson cowboy hat, sitting on his horse, overlooking Palm Springs in the early1960s. My sister as a pudgy little girl playing in the sand with her infant brother (my ears were as big then as they are now). Me sitting in a giant tea cup at Disneyland, back when there was only one Disneyland. I guess with each passing of an old relative, and with the premature passing of some of my peers, I’m spending a little more time contemplating the past rather than the present and future. Bobbi is one more person gone who played an unforgettable role in my development. This past week I have taken it upon myself to contact a few of my relatives and send them old pictures from our family photo album which pertain to them. I guess it’s my way of staying connected to what little family I have left. I leave you this week with a song I wrote several years ago…

                                     Scrapbook

You’re in the kitchen brewing coffee, the aroma fills the air
Morning sunlight through the window filters through your hair
The dog is at the window, watching for the squirrels
And everything is perfect in our little world.

Cho:
And I just want this moment to survive all my life
Something to hold onto every day of my life
To carry me through all those trying times
To capture the contentment in the scrapbook of my mind.

That’s me down by the water playing in the sand
Grampy’s in his lounge chair the king of all the land
Mom and Dad and barbecues, the smell of fresh cut grass
Just a summer day on Thunder Bay, I wish that it would last

Cho: repeat

Bridge:

These days I find it difficult to keep my spirits high
Surrounded by the foul rag and bone shop of my life
I fall into a dark hole when I ask the question why?
Memories of past contentment help me to get by.

We’re at the table sipping coffee, silence fills the room
Out on the lake we hear the calling of a distant loon
And when our life turns difficult, as it will someday soon
I’ll open up my scrapbook to this sunny afternoon

Cho: repeat


Here’s to remembering all the sunny afternoons.

The Oppenheimer Report - 7/5/11

Happy Fourth to all my Yankee readers, and a belated Happy Canada Day to all the Canadians. Hope you still have all your fingers after this incendiary day. I was in Buffalo to attend a funeral, and last night, it sounded like the city was at war. From dusk until about Midnight, the streets were ablaze with fireworks and explosives. It was almost laughable how many explosions there were. I wish I could get my hands on some of those M-80s we used to blow up, but apparently they’re difficult to procure. I never actually made the purchase, but we used to buy our explosives on the black market. Some guy would appear shortly before the Fourth and sell bombs out of the trunk of his Camaro. I’d hate to think what would have happened if someone hit that gentleman’s car from behind, igniting the dangerous cargo. One M-80 can blow a small tree stump out of the ground; I can’t imagine what ten gross would do. Of course, every Fourth, there is the obligatory news story about some black market fireworks manufacturing disaster wherein somebody’s house burns down. I actually went to a website that sells the fuses, canisters, and packing material, because I thought to myself, “How hard could it be?” Gunpowder, wax, a fuse, a canister, and maybe a few other ingredients, and presto, you have your basic, garden variety M-80! I am sure that simply by visiting that website I have put myself on some kind of FBI dangerous person list. Relax everybody, I’m just a mischievous fifty-five year-old going on fifteen. And speaking of mischief …

As promised, this week’s report deals with the how, why, and where of the notorious Annual Buffalo T.V. Shoot. The first shoot took place January 1, 1977 and was the brainchild of several of my old friends from the neighborhood in Buffalo. I like to tell people the event began as a symbolic gesture expressing our displeasure with all the jingoistic Bi-Centennial manure we had been force-fed for the large part of 1976. If I saw one more used car salesman dressed up like Uncle Sam, I was going to puke. In truth, a bunch of us were home for the holidays, sitting around getting drunk at some Christmas party, and we decided it would be fun to raffle off tickets for the chance to shoot a television set. After all,who needs a reason to shoot a television set? Our first victim was a Zenith black and white which my pal Bob and I procured. Over the years, we got better at picking our victims, but that first purchase was a little weird. Imagine going to buy a used television and explaining to your salesman that you only need it to get three channels, once, for about three hours. The repair guy who sold it to us was very proud of the fact that he had almost completely restored this period piece, and all Bob and I cared about was that it had moderate reception on three channels. I felt kind of bad for the guy. Anyhow, New Year’s Day 1977 arrived and we all headed over to Canada for the big raffle. Because I have never owned a gun, I wasn’t responsible for explaining to the customs agent why we were bringing weapons across the border on New Year’s Day, but I’m quite sure we didn’t tell the truth. I won that first raffle. The winning ticket had a picture of a blindfolded television with a cigarette dangling off the screen. Blam! I shot the Zenith (but I did not shoot no R-C-A) with a twelve gauge shotgun. I believe I shot John Madden in the back. After the first kill shot, other attendees were allowed to take pot shots. We really destroyed that first set. You’ve heard of first blood, well this was first transistor, and it was intoxicating. For a while, we had a trophy room in someone’s garage, housing quite a few of these electronic carcasses. The event was such a success that it was repeated for about ten years thereafter, usually on New Year’s Day, and always on the Canadian shore. Some of these TV shoots were well attended, and in keeping with the general political incorrectness of the whole affair, beer was often served as a refreshment. Some of the murders were videotaped (we filmed the first one with Dad’s old 8mm movie camera). One year, we had three or four sets on deck to shoot. We shot consoles, monitors; one year, I think we even shot a VCR. The only criteria was that the electronic device had to be plugged in and working at the time of execution. Several of the shoots were by firing squad, and I remember there was a lot of firepower involved in some of those executions. One year, I believe there was even a high-powered elephant gun. Many of you have probably heard the story about Elvis shooting his TV set with a pistol. I can say from experience that it is a very satisfying thing to do. There has been talk about resurrecting the ritual, but so far no firm plans have been made.

Former Illinois Governor and grown-up-Eddie-Munster-look-a-like, Rod Blagojevich, was finally found guilty last week on 17 of 20 charges of corruption. He’s the guy who tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. Sign your name in the book of jive and get ready for your vacation in the Big Country Club. And on the other side of the justice-is-blind spectrum, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee. While we can all hope for karmic retribution in this one, I'm not optimistic. The final verdict came down to the lack of evidence. No one could say how or when the little girl died, and therein reasonable doubt trumps all circumstantial evidence. Ugh.

Finally, on my country's birthday, I'd like to express my gratitude to all the men and women who serve our countries and protect my freedom to spout my silly opinions. For the record, I do not take that privalege for granted.


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED