The Oppenheimer Report 2/11/13

As I sit here beginning to write this week’s report in my “office” (Shauna’s rather tiny old bedroom in her parent’s house) it is snowing pretty hard outside and our Miniature Schnauzer Jasper is snoring loudly beside me. She sleeps beside me every night, which is no problem on our king bed up north, but becomes a little more problematic on this tiny twin bed. Jasper is a notorious bed hog, and for a shrimpy17 lb dog she has an uncanny ability to make her sprawled out body as large, heavy, and hard to move as possible. I believe this is a fundamental tenet in the K9 rulebook: “When sleeping on your master’s bed show a wanton disregard for his comfort.” This is one of those blissful, peaceful moments in two months filled with chaos, stress, emotional sucker punches, and emergencies. We now have health care workers we think we can trust, and for the moment all is calm. That will inevitably change. Bills have been paid, the house is in order, there are no appointments for a while, and I can sit down for a few hours and read my Bob Newhart autobiography. This is my fourth or fifth biography in the past few months, and I seem to favor them of late, especially those of famous musicians and comedians. I now know all about Keith Richards, Neil Young, Carl Reiner, Bob Newhart, and am about to plunge into the life of Michael J. Fox. The narcissist in me wants to explore any similarities I may share with these flawed but gifted men. So far, not all that much in common. All I need are a few tattoos, a body piercing or two, some drugs, a few emotional traumas, a sense of humor and some talent, then I’m off to the races.

Of course the big weather news last week was the huge blizzard that hammered parts of New England and New York. One town in Massachusetts got 97 cm of snow dumped on it, which for you non metrics is over 3 feet. I don’t know why but people so often ignore the dire weather warnings; a lot of motorist stranded on Long Island Expressway had to be rescued from the blizzard. Toronto got hit with what was predicted to be a formidable winter storm, but it was not nearly as bad as what the East Coast experienced. Friday morning, as it was beginning to snow and blow hard, I drove the night shift health care aid to a hub bus station. Buses near the Taylor’s house were not running, and well after what was supposed to be morning rush hour, traffic was backing up on all main streets. With its radial snows my SUV will go through almost anything, but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the majority of Toronto drivers were out of their league in this storm. I remember one winter in Buffalo back in the 80s when every morning for a few weeks it seemed I was brushing 5 to 10 inches of snow off my car. To me this storm was like an average winter storm for Buffalo. Child’s play. I remember one winter, maybe five or ten years ago, when Watertown, N.Y., one of those snow belt towns on the east end of Lake Ontario, got nailed with something like 6 or 7 feet of snow in a very short period of time. Now that’s a snowstorm. Lots of people remember the notorious Buffalo Blizzard of ’77. I was not there because I was on a plane heading for a semester abroad in Ireland when the storm hit. The storm was just beginning while I was on the tarmac at Buffalo International Airport, and they shut the airport down shortly thereafter. By the time I got to Ireland, the storm was over. My Irish family in Dublin was watching it on BBC news when I arrived and it so happened that the video clip that came across the screen, at the exact moment I looked, was of Chapin Pkwy, the street on which my parents lived. What are the chances?

The Canadian penny will soon be going out of circulation - it costs more to make them than they are worth as currency. Should I the consummate investor now start collecting them because, like the sheets of Elvis postage stamps I once bought, they are likely to appreciate upwards of 1.3% over fifteen years? Speaking of Elvis, last week was Elvis Week on Letterman, and every night last week Dave featured an Elvis impersonator as his musical guest. I watched them all! There was one Elvis impersonator, representing the younger Elvis, who did a pretty good rendition of Jailhouse Rock. The guy Thursday night nailed the “Later Elvis” persona, complete with the corseted gut, the garish, caped white polyester jump suit (Greaser Man from Glad meets Batman), the cracking voice, the flop sweat, and the ludicrous, spasmodic, older-guy-trying-to-gyrate movements that characterized the King of Rock ’n Roll’s final performances. It was genius. It never occurred to me, but of course some of these guys would focus on “past-his-prime” Elvis. Imagine basing your career as a performer on the imitation of a celebrity’s tragic decline.

That’s almost as pathetic as me watching, and enjoying all five Elvis impersonators.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED