The Oppenheimer Report 12/30/09

Hope you all had a very happy holiday. I spent the last week down in Buffalo attending to the various needs of my Mom and to visit with some cousins who were in from California. This year, we had rain for Christmas Day, but two days later I found myself driving in near white out conditions. Boy, do I miss those little lake effect snowstorms! It was a good chance to try out my new Blizzak snow tires.

I am writing this report on a brand new laptop I purchased on Boxing Day. We still need to get the other one fixed, but we also needed an upgraded computer, and this one cost about as much as the other one will cost to fix. Of greatest concern is the information we had not yet backed up from the old hard drive that crashed. Thankfully, our computer guru managed to recover most of it. I am constantly amazed by the relentless march of technology, and this new laptop, which cost about $500.00, comes with a large, high definition screen, a big hard drive, a DVD burner, and all the bells and whistles I‘ll never figure out how to use. My only fear is that Windows 7, the newest Microsoft operating system, will prove to be as much of a disaster as Vista was. I had no real problems with Windows XP, and wonder why Microsoft keeps screwing up their “improvements”. Really, all I use this thing for is to write my reports and to post them to my blog. As with any new software, there is a learning curve, but that's progress.
 

In the past six months, I have become almost completely reliant on reading glasses. The last time I went to the eye doctor, over a year a go, he said I’d need glasses to read from now on, but I didn‘t believe him. There were months of denial before the truth sank in. Then, I reluctantly purchased a pair of dollar store glasses, which worked great. The problem was that I never had them with me when I needed them. Subsequently, I have probably purchased at least fifteen pairs of dollar store glasses, and I have no idea where any of them are. I can’t stand those things that attach to the glasses and hang around my neck; I find them annoying. If I wear a shirt with a pocket it’s no problem, but often my shirts have no pockets. If I put them in my pants pocket, I usually end up breaking or bending them. Now my strategy is to have a pair in every room of the house, and to leave them there. I keep two pair in the car, because I can’t read a map without them. What really burns me is that EVERYTHING is in minute print these days. Instructions on frozen food boxes, directions for appliances …  have you ever tried to read the ingredients on the back of a shampoo bottle? Fuggetabottit.

As the New Year approaches, we are once again bombarded with reports of the omnipresent danger which surrounds us. Some would-be terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound jet on Christmas Day by igniting a bomb sewn into his underpants. If I hear one more joke alluding to a “briefing” I’m going to puke. Luckily, no one was hurt, but certainly this was a red flag that airport security isn’t working. How did this bozo get on a plane wearing explosives??? I fear we will soon be awakened from our complacency when one of these zealous fools succeeds. By the way, I thought Reid "The Shoe Bomber" was bad, but how would you like to spend the rest of your days in prison listening to your inmates refer to you as “Umar the Underpants Bomber?”

As we bid adieu to another year, there will be the lists of famous people who died and a reprise of all the year’s momentous events. For me, 2009 will be most memorable as the year we finally moved into Jasper Bark Lodge. That little project consumed the past three years of our lives and there is still work to be done. May I suggest that if any of you decide to embark on a journey to build a custom log home … don’t do it. You might lose your mind. As we approach 2010, I generally resolve to be a good son to all my remaining parents, and, once again, not to say nasty things about the French. Happy New Year. Watch your balls drop, whack your piñatas (oh my), and let professionals do the driving. Have a happy healthy 2010!

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 12/21/09

Ho friggin'ho! Up in the Great White North we've recently had the deep freeze that so paralyzed the western provinces last week. I heard a statisitic on the news indicating that, one day last week, Edmonton, Alberta was the coldest place IN THE WORLD. Last Thursday was one of those deep freeze days here in Ontario, and we had some difficulty getting in and out of our long driveway. Though we are regularly plowed out, temperature fluctuations left our drive icy. Because I was testing out our new snowblower, I think our plow guy thought we didn't need him that day, and consequently, we have a driveway which is, at present, icy and unevenly plowed. Two wheel drive vehicles will get stuck, and even my four wheel drive was having some trouble. I finally bit the bullet and bought a set of Blizzak radial snows for my vehicle. All season radials are fine for the city, but they don't really cut the ketchup in the Great White North. As a friend pointed out from personal exoerience, one wants all the traction insurance one can get up here. I'm impressed with the new Blizzaks; they seem to grab even on ice.

Someone told me this was going to be a milder winter than the past two were, but so far, other than starting a little later (is today the official winter soltice ... I know it's soon?), the bad weather seems to be about the same. I read that Minden, Ontario, not so far from us, received about 140 centimeters of snow in one 48 hour period. Yowza, that's a lot of snow! Now the East Coast is getting hammered. Perfect timing for Obama's recent trip to Copenhagen to attend the climate change conference. Amidst violent protests in the streets, leaders came away with some kind of (likely unrealistic) agreement to lower greenhouse gases, measured I think by a goal to lower the global temperature by 2 degrees C. And it will only cost $800 Billion and bankrupt most Third World nations. This all sounds great on paper, but so far, nobody seems to have figured out how we go green AND grow our voracious economies. Does anybody in their right mind believe that the U.S. and China will comply? I wonder how much jet fuel is sucked up flying all these world leaders to their respective summits in order to decide how to save the world. Ever hear of video conferencing? As I was waiting for my new snow tires to be installed, I picked up a recent issue of Road and Track. Clearly GM is not completely on board with the concept of reducing our carbon footprint. Take Chevy for instance ... they're putting out a new Corvette that delivers over 700 hp, and the stock Camaro V-8 puts out over 400hp. Our bailout dollars at work.

And speaking of conspicuous consumption, director James Cameron's latest mega-movie "Avatar" was released last weekend. His last big flick, "Titanic" was certainly a box office success, but this latest big budget monster opened to mixed revues. I understand the movie, a 3-D sci-fi epic (2hrs and 40 min.), was 15 years in the making and cost around $250Million to produce (chicken feed for the U.S. Treasury) ... not including the ADDITIONAL $150 Million for MARKETING. Doesn't almost half a billion dollars seem a bit costly for one movie? I wonder how much it cost to make "The Big Chill" or "Little Miss Sunshine"... and were there even marketing budgets for those movies?? Hel-lo ... less special effects, better writing!

Final Christmas tip: if you still haven't bought your loved one something for Christmas, may I suggest one of Tiger Woods' Gatorade drinks ... very collectible amd soon to be rare. By the way, Merry Christmas to the PGA! Seriously though, may you all experience peace and contentment this holiday season, and may that peace and contentlment spread like wildfire through the hearts and souls of those who need it most. Hug your child, share some humor, shovel your neighbor's walk, or, as in my case, just try not to be as miserable and ornery as you usuually are. And Santa, remember, no booze on Christmas Eve.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Oppenheimer Report 12-14-09

It’s the deep freeze out west and here in Ontario we’re getting record amounts of snow. At present, I am writing this report on an old laptop I used to use only for travel, because the good laptop up north crashed last week and with it our email and internet access. In speaking with our computer guru in Toronto, it is clear that this isn’t one of those problems he can walk us through over the phone. Last Wednesday, I was going to drive the machine down to him, but low and behold, there was a winter storm warning and predictions of seriously bad weather around and due south of us. I’ve driven through enough whiteouts and squalls to know I didn’t want to deal with that. We then had the brilliant idea to send the computer down to Toronto by Purolator, so I packed it up and left it at the designated location nearby for a Friday pick-up. Friday morning I got a call saying that the package was not picked up, because all deliveries were cancelled due to ANOTHER major storm. Apparently, the Town of Huntsville got walloped with around 80cm of snow and much of the town was closed, as were parts of Hwy 11, the main route down to Toronto. It’s very odd, because I’d been to Huntsville about five hours before this storm hit, and while there was snow on the ground from the last storm, there was no sign of the impending squall. When I was walking out of Shopper’s Humungous Drug Warehouse, I overheard two locals talking about the warnings of the imminent major snowstorm, and they were shrugging off the warnings as a “sky-is-falling” prediction. Guess they were mistaken. These storms are lake effect squalls or “streamers”, not unlike the lake effect storms I used to experience in Buffalo off Lake Erie. They set up over Georgian Bay and what is unusual about these storms is that they often travel in narrow bands. Huntsville and south to Gravenhurst were hit badly -- some places got over 100cm of snow -- and the storm extended east in a narrow band about 80-100 kilometers. 30 kilometers to the north, in Katrine, we didn't have nearly as much snow. We were out of that band.

Back about twenty-five years ago, when I was still an avid skier, one Friday night I and a friend were driving down to ski country south of Buffalo in my little Ford Fiesta, and we drove into one of those lake effect streamers. It came out of nowhere and before we knew it, we were in big trouble. Visibility was nil, the wind was blowing strong, and road became so covered with snow that it was impossible to tell where we were going. All road signs were completely unreadable, and the drifting snow was almost to the top of the mile markers in the side of the road. At one point, I stopped the car, on a major highway, got out and unfroze the wiper blades. When I looked around, I could see that we were the only car on the road. I nervously got back in the car and crept to the next visible exit. As I pulled off, I could see the blinking yellow lights of ten or twenty other cars and trucks in the same predicament, parked and waiting for the storm to abate. You’ll probably laugh to hear me say that one of the best cars I ever owned for driving in the snow was my 1970 VW Beetle. That thing had great traction, and if it did get stuck, it was light and fairly easy to move. The worst car for snow was my AMC Hornet station wagon.

Last Friday night we lit the first candles of Chanukah, so Happy Chanukah to all the members of my tribe. Only ten shopping days left until X-mas. If you’re at a loss for what to get that not-so-special someone who is nevertheless enthralled by your unfailing sense of humor, fear not! Google the Museum of Bad art, or MOBA for short; those guys have a slew of tacky gifts. If you don’t like that idea, there’s no finer gift than a Weekly World News Headline tee shirt. My favorite headlines: “BatBoy Lives!” and “Woman Killed by Mink Coat”. Seasons Beatings! Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Oppenheimer Report 12/8/09

In the news last week, President Obama announced plans to send 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. It’s interesting to me that he can on the one hand decry the troop surge in Iraq and then turn around and endorse essentially the same thing in Afghanistan. The more I watch and read about this situation, the more I don’t like it. More troops in Afghanistan puts more pressure on Pakistan, and America already has a public relations problem there. I don’t think we need more terrorists mobilizing in a country that has nuclear explosives. Speaking of PR …

Stateside, the big news last week was a scandal surrounding golf celebrity Tiger Woods. First, I heard that Tiger had been in a car accident and was “seriously” injured. Then, I heard he’d been almost immediately released from the hospital, and I thought, “o.k., it couldn’t have been all that serious.” Afterwards, I heard about a National Enquirer story alleging that Woods had cheated on his wife, and the plot thickened. The alleged mistress denied having an affair with Woods, but then out came Jaimee Grubb (appropriately named?), who claimed SHE had had a two and one half year fling with Tiger. That revelation prompted a public apology from Woods for his various “indiscretions”. Of course, there was rampant speculation about the car crash near his home in Orlando. Did he have a big fight with his wife Elin Nordegren over the infidelity, prompting him to storm off in his Caddy SUV and crash into a fire hydrant? Did Elin smash out the back window of his vehicle to save him or bash his head in with his own golf clubs? Who cares? Well, I do; I live and breathe to find out how rich and famous people sabotage their good fortune. Tiger should have followed the teachings of Dave Letterman and nipped the whole thing at the bud. Letterman was a master at disarming a potential public relations nightmare when he immediately confessed to his wrongdoings and publicly apologized for all the people he’d hurt. All Tiger had to do was bite the bullet, and say “Yes, I was a hound dog, yes, I cheated on my wife, and yes, we had a fight over it. Now the story is metastasizing. Other women are coming forward with allegations that Tiger slept with them. There was a big debate on CNN yesterday about whether the private lives of celebrities is any of our business (the same CNN that basically paid the bills for years by covering the O.J. trial). It probably isn’t, but we as a society (read I) have an insatiable appetite for reports of human failure. Tiger bogeyed big time when he attacked the press. Sorry, bad press is an unfortunate by-product of celebrity. Once the scandal is revealed, lick your wounds, lay low until the dust settles, then work on damage control. Eventually, the hyenas will move on to the next carcass. It’s amazing what people will forget given enough time. Do you think anyone besides Ken Starr is still talking about Bill Clinton’s oral adventure?

In anticipation of the horrible winters we had in the past two years, we bought a snow blower for the house in Katrine. Based on recommendations of local residents, we purchased one with a 27” cut. We had a pretty good dumping last Friday, and it seems to do the trick. Of course, we have a guy to plow as well, but the snow blower is insurance. According to my nephew the weatherman, it should be a milder winter than were the past two, but I’m shell-shocked. Final note , I was in Wal-Mart the other day and noticed they now sell an IPod Touch with 64 gigabytes of memory. Great gift idea for the holidays, but does anyone really have 6000 record albums they listen to regularly? Hey, it beats a salad shooter. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Oppenheimer Report 11/30/09

I just returned from Buffalo where we celebrated the American Thanksgiving with my Mom, my sister, and her family. The newest addition to the group is Nadia, the two month-old baby daughter of my oldest nephew and his wife. Hands down, the most energetic member of the family, and the one with the best lungs, is Samantha, the now-toddling 18 month-old daughter of my younger nephew and his wife. Last Thanksgiving, I posted a photo of Samantha and her dad, posing with my dad. My mother’s house is full of rare and fragile china, and almost everything had to be moved to a higher level when Samantha, the little whirling dervish, spun through the house like the Tasmanian Devil. I actually caught one rather valuable piece of glass as it was capriciously flung through the air. Thanksgiving dinner was bittersweet as our patriarch, my father, was conspicuously absent for the first time ever. We decided to commemorate him by laying his silly red Cornell sherpa hat across his chair at the head of the table. I had the benefit of his presence for fifty-three Thanksgivings, and he gave great toasts. He couldn’t carve a bird to save his life, but boy did he have a way with words. There have always been three generations at our Thanksgiving table, and this year was no exception. With Samantha and Nadia at one end of the table, and my Mom at the other end, there was plenty reason for joy and laughter. The circle of life continues. As I have often said, Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday of the year, and I realize that I have plenty for which to be thankful. I prefer holidays that have nothing to do with religion, and this is the one holiday every year when my family gathers together. It’s also when I choose to re-connect with friends and relatives I might not speak to during the rest of the year.

As I write this entry, I have just returned from court in Sundridge, Ontario, where I was subpoenaed as a witness in an assault case. Last May, the guy who was hired to plow our driveway last year assaulted and injured one of our employees, at our home, when we disputed one of his overcharges. Not only did he charge too much, but he always came to plow at the end of the day, long after we needed his services. After delaying several court dates, and after making every attempt to manipulate the system, he was finally forced to face the music. Shauna and I had witnessed the assault, and this guy was claiming our employee initiated the fight. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and I was worried that the charges, brought by the police, not us, would be dropped if we did not pursue the matter. As it turned out, the schmuck ended up having to sit in the court room for over an hour, along with his skanky girlfriend, waiting while the court scrambled to find a court recorder. I think that, having to sit there for an hour, and seeing the three of us, prepared to testify against him, was enough to give him and his attorney pause. Had he testified to what he’d said in his police report, he would likely have been forced to perjure himself on the stand. Anyhow, he caved and pled guilty, and now he will spend the next six months under house arrest, after which he will be on probation and likely attend anger management classes. Merry Christmas! What a hoser.

Yes it’s once again that time of year, when little people all over the world dress up like elves and endure the indignity of capitalism gone mad. It should be a better year for the beleaguered retailers than it was last year, and you should look for my holiday suggestions in the coming weeks. If you crave visions of sugar plums dancing in your holiday-addled heads, nothing says “I’m a holiday-induced nutcase” like Jamie’s famous “High velocity 151 Eggnog”. Hide the car keys and prepare to get naked in front of complete strangers, we’re gonna break dance under the mistletoe tonight. You won’t know what hit you, but make sure someone has a camera. Nobody says celebrating has to be pretty.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The OppenheimerReport 11/23/09

I was in Toronto last weekend and I called my friend Bob at the last minute to see if he could drive up from Buffalo for our annual boys-night-out weekend of depravity and debauchery. Last year, the event was to be scheduled around the Toronto International Boat Show, but when my dad got sick we had to cancel. In years past we have often chosen to spend the weekend in Niagara Falls, Ontario. You hear and see a lot of ads extolling the excitement you’ll experience when you drop your life savings at the Fallsview Casino, but Bob and I are not big gamblers. We choose Niagara Falls, Ontario because we can’t get enough of them chamber of horror wax museums.

This year, we did a walking tour of Toronto’s several entertainment districts. We walked from our apartment down to University and Front to a sports bar, where we watched the Sabres succumb to the Bruins as we dined on bar food, then watched the thrilling conclusion to a Raptors/Heat game, wherein the Raptors won. That’s right, I watched part of a basketball game. The thing about Toronto is, it’s such a great sports town that one can get vicariously caught up in the fan frenzy, regardless of the event. I’m not a baseball fan either, but I was up here when the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series back in the early 90’s, and the town just erupted in unbridled glee. I, along with tens of thousands of jubilant fans walked up Yonge Street to celebrate that momentous event, and it was an experience I will never forget. As a Bills fan (and a Leafs fan … ugh), I’ve learned to take what I can get.

Because the Air Canada Centre is close to the bar we were in, when the Raptors game was over, the bar filled up rapidly with Raptors fans. Nothing makes me feel old (hey, I’m like only 54, and that is totally not that old)) like finding myself in a sports bar surrounded by twenty-somethings … six hundred young-uns with their beers in one hand and their Blackberrys in the other. Bob and I joked about how there was clearly a buffer zone between us and everyone else; as if they feared they might catch some virulent strain of old age if they ventured too close. “Stay away from the creepy old guys, I think they’re like, narcs or something!” The only time anyone came near us was if they became so mesmerized by the text message on their personal communication devices that they strayed into our circle of fossildom. Brief aside, I realize this is the age of texting, but does anyone else find this a strange social phenomenon? Was this bar full of young, single adults, texting other young, single adults at other bars, presumably to let them know they were somewhere other than where they should be? Decades ago, when I was a young, wild, and crazy playboy (hah!), I didn’t call people from bars, I went to the bar WITH them, and then talked (or didn’t talk) TO them, FACE TO FACE. There is some kind of weird social disconnect going on here.

A nightcap at the legendary Horseshoe Tavern on Queen Street, my Mecca of dive bars, and then back up to the apartment, again on foot, with a few stops along the way, mostly to relieve myself. The older I get, the less booze I drink, and the more I brag about “the experience” afterwards. Next time, I’m wearing “Depends” … those bar bathrooms are deeesgustin’. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/16/09

The weekend before last we had a warm spell, and we were able to get done a lot of the outdoor chores we needed to do before the onslaught of winter. After cleaning up the property a bit, burning some brush, and splitting some more firewood, I surprised everyone with my stupidity by putting on my swim trunks and jumping in the lake … but not before insuring that the event was photographed. Of course, with all the cold weather we’ve been having, the lake was ice cold, and my dip lasted about ten or fifteen seconds. When I saw the pictures, I realized that there is nothing in the shot to signify that it was taken in the first week of November; it looks as if it could have been a warm summer day. If the shot was panned out, the viewer could see that all the trees were bare. One thing in the picture indicates the season: the dock is up. It’s a digital shot, and I’m pretty sure the date is recorded, but it doesn’t matter. I know I did it, and I have four witnesses. I never understood those polar bear clubs, where crowds of crazy people, jump into ice water in January, but now I think I could probably do that. Yes, I am an idiot … and proud of it.

Last week, our long absent builder showed up and dumped topsoil on our front and side lots to bring us up to finish grade, and he also spread gravel on the lower drive and under the carport so that we will no longer be constantly tracking sand into the house. After he was gone, Shauna and I seeded the topsoil so that, come spring, we might get an early start on some grass. I can’t imagine what that will be like because, for the past three years, this place has been a construction site, covered in sand, mud, clay, and construction materials. Now we’re slowly beginning to reclaim our property. Though it will be a long time before this place is landscaped the way we envision it, just getting all of the construction debris off the premises has made a world of difference.

Final thoughts … I went in for my annual physical a few weeks ago, and the doctor’s office was pandemonium. Phones were ringing off the hook, and though the office had just opened, the waiting room was full. Apparently, there was a lot of concern about the shortage of flu vaccine, and people were scrambling to find out if they qualified as “high risk”. I usually get a flu shot, and I’m not sure if it helps or not. Knock on wood, I don’t get sick that often. I’m certainly in no hurry to get the H1N1 vaccine. Save it for the people who are more vulnerable. While this swine flu does not particularly scare me, the word “pandemic” does. Based on the fact that there is a shortage of this H1N1 vaccine, at a time when it is probably needed the most, I am concerned that some more virulent and deadly virus might some day shake us out of our delusions of control. We in the West spend so much of our energy obsessing over our health – don’t smoke, don’t drink, disinfect everything, eat less salt, lose weight. What is becoming increasingly clear to me is how out of control we really are over our health. Sadly, in many cases it boils down to who inherited the best genes. Science has advanced considerably since the last deadly flu epidemic, but are we any safer now? Yes and no.

I’ll tell you this … there’s nothing like a dip in an ice cold lake to cure what ails you.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/9/09

Last Thursday morning we woke up to a brief snow flurry and a blanket of wet snow on the ground. The lake was barely visible, and then, suddenly the flurry was over and the sun broke out across the lake. The snow-covered trees were absolutely spectacular to behold, and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. This log home is situated in a place of such beauty and serenity, that one glance out the window calms the soul. On the other hand, there has been so much trouble associated with the actual building of the house, so many loose ends, and disputes with contractors, suppliers, and builders, that it is difficult sometimes to see the forest for the trees. Though we are essentially done working on the house, at least for this season, I wake up every morning anxious about what must be fixed or changed. I wrote a song a long time ago entitled “The Curse of the Sea”, and there is a line in that song which speaks to the issue of contentment:

"Everybody has a hideaway, kept under lock and key
In our mind’s eye we’re all travelers to where we’d rather be
Anxiousness can imprison you, you don’t know what you need
You just know you haven’t got it now, call it the curse of the sea…”

A week ago, while I was down in Buffalo, I took Mom out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant that had been recommended by one of the nurses. Mom had a craving for Chinese food, and whenever she is willing to venture out, we encourage her to do so. The trouble was, because her favorite nurse was not on duty, she wanted me to take her out, alone. On top of her litany of other chronic illnesses associated with old age, my mom was recently diagnosed with a not-so-well known and very challenging form of dementia known as Lewy Body Disease. For years we thought she had Alzheimer’s, but Lewy Body is quite different. The good news is that there can be long periods of lucidity. The bad news is that, one never knows when those will be. One moment she’s Mom, and the next she can turn into an entirely different person. It’s a bit like a geriatric multiple personality disorder, and it’s very strange to behold. Needless to say, I am wary of taking her anywhere without professional assistance, and yet, she was adamant about wanting to go with just me. The nurse on duty seemed to think I could handle the task, so out we went, with the implicit understanding that the nurse was available if she was needed. It was a cold, windy, miserable evening, and when we got to the restaurant, I realized it was a bit of a dump. That didn’t seem to bother Mom, and we decided to give it a try regardless. The food was quite good, and we had a very enjoyable time together. Most of my trepidation about the outing had faded away by dinner’s end, then, as we were leaving the restaurant, she seemed to get very winded from almost no exertion. I feared she was having some kind of coronary event, and by the time we got to the car, I was running through various disaster scenarios, involving nurses, ambulances, and a nearby hospital. Thankfully, she stabilized and we were able to go home. I dodged a bullet there, but that was probably my last dinner alone with Mom.

Having just watched my father slowly pass away, I am now watching it happen to my mom. In her moments of clarity, I see glimpses of the woman I once knew, but that woman is almost completely gone now. While I will not mourn a life well lived, and she’s had a pretty good life so far, I do find myself with ambivalent feelings about this difficult end stage. For my own peace of mind, I know I need to be there for her. For her there is ennui, and confusion, and anger, and a whole host of other emotions going on. For me there is only the futile effort to help her face this last challenge with as much dignity as she can muster. For her, dignity is in short supply these days.

“In my mind I travel distant lands, to where the mountains meet the sea
To Africa, to the South of France, to Ireland so green
And you can call me a fool to worship the adventure of uncertainty
But my life is filing papers, I prefer the curse of the sea …

Infatuation, imagination, no destinations,
Call it the curse of the sea”



As the late Warren Zevon once said, “you’ve got to enjoy every sandwich”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/4/09

Hope you all had a happy Halloween. I was in Buffalo last weekend to see my mom, and once again, I did not dress up. I wonder how many people went with the ubiquitous “balloon boy” theme. I like topical costumes. Once, many years ago, there was a news story about some whales that got stuck in a block of ice, and I remember some girl coming to our Halloween party dressed as the whale. She used a giant piece of Styrofoam for the ice and made a whale with its head sticking out of it. It was hilarious, and very creative. One of my more elaborate costumes was a tuna fish. I spent a long time on that costume – I hand-sewed the whole thing - and it WAS amusing. Unfortunately, it looked nothing like a tuna fish; everybody thought I was a sea monster or a shark. The problem with Halloween is that we always have candy left over, and I feel obliged to eat it. To make matters worse, this year we gave out Reeses Peanut Butter cups, and those are my favorites.

While I was down in Buffalo last weekend, I stopped at one of my favorite fast food restaurants, Mighty Taco. Mighty Taco is a Buffalo phenomenon, and they’ve grown considerably since I started eating there. Mighty Taco is far from the best Mexican food available in Buffalo, but as fast food goes, it’s pretty good. They may have locations all over the Northeast for all I know. When I first started to eat at Mighty Taco, back in the early eighties, they had only one or two locations. Their first location, a little hole in the wall on Hertel Ave., was walking distance from one of my favorite bars. Many a late night was capped off with a garden burrito and a Super Mighty Taco (my particular favorite). Mighty Taco also had the rudest ads on radio, which, of course, appealed to me. One ad in particular involved someone farting loudly on a bus. You hear all the other passengers groan, but then someone comments that the gas smells pretty good, and he asks the gas producer where he ate. Why, Mighty Taco, of course! I think the owner of the company had a recording studio in his basement and he created his own very off color ads. Whatever he did seemed to work, because Buffalonians have been consistently loyal to Mighty Taco. Years ago, when Taco Bell, the great Satan of TexMex food, invaded Western N.Y with multiple locations, Buffalonians voted with their wallets, and within a few years Taco Bell closed most or all of their locations. Brief aside … the best burrito I have tasted to date is available at a little restaurant on College St. west of Bathurst in Toronto.

In the news last week, Hillary Clinton was in harm’s way when terrorist bombs went off in Kabul. As the U.S. contemplates sending another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, there seems to be quite a lot of debate about what is the proper course of action for that war torn country. I like the strategy of winning the “hearts and minds” of the people, but I think maybe that will require a little more understanding of their culture than we have the patience to develop. I’m afraid it’s a pipe dream to hope that some of the billions in American aid will be used for anything other than fighting the dreaded Taliban. I wonder if anybody has actually done a cost benefit analysis. Which is more effective: $5 Billion for guns, tanks, and ammo, or $5 Billion for improved health care and the rebuilding of infrastructure? We lost seventeen or eighteen men last week along with two helicopters. And what about reports that Afghan President Karzai’s brother is on the CIA payroll? Yikes, are we now in the opium business? If that guy really is “on our side”, he’s a dead man now that his cover is blown. Remember when Geraldo was drawing maps in the sand during the Iraq war, revealing sensitive information about U.S. troop positions? War is hell, especially with guys like Geraldo in your side. Michael Jackson’s movie was released last week, and I had to laugh when I read an explanation for why the movie was rated PG-14 … apparently “crotch-grabbing” is considered something which requires parental supervision. Who knew? I do want to see the movie, because, like many other people, I want to see footage of that last rehearsal. Train wrecks R Us.

Finally, and with reference to last week’s report about the old T.V. programs, how could I have forgotten, “I Love Lucy”, Mr. Ed, and one of my favorites, “Green Acres”? I loved that double-dealing Mr. Haney character, remember him … and the scatter-brained Mr. Kimball …and Fred Ziffel’s pig “Arnold? I wonder what ever happened to Arnold. I hope he didn’t end up in a taco. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/26/09

I heard on the news the other day that comedian Milton Supmon, AKA Soupy Sales, had died, and that made me a little nostalgic. I am just old enough to remember watching his show when I was a little boy. Back in the dark ages of black and white television, Soupy made me laugh , the good old fashioned way, with cream pies in the face and puppets. I watched a lot of kid shows back then … Kukla, Fran, and Ollie … Sherrie Lewis, with that annoying sock puppet Lamb Chop … Howdy Doody … Uncle Milty. I watched a lot of T.V. in general, but the T.V. shows I remember most fondly are the local shows from Buffalo.

There was a local Buffalo children’s show called “Rocket Ship 7” and it was hosted by Channel 7 weatherman Dave Thomas, along with his sidekicks Promo the Robot and Mr. Beeper. Mr. Beeper went on to gain notoriety as a popular tool of drug lords. I watched Rocket Ship 7 every morning when I was a kid. I guess my imagination was better in those days. One day, my dad took me to the Channel 7 studio in Buffalo, because he had to do some community welfare thing on T.V., and he brought me along because he thought I might find the experience interesting. When we got there, the first thing I saw was the set where Rocket Ship 7 was taped. My bubble burst the moment I saw that set because, even as a little kid, I realized how cheesy it was. Promo the Robot was in fact just a refrigerator box spray painted silver with some coat buttons glued on. I think his mouth was made out of a cheese grater or something. It was awful; I have never trusted the reality of television since. Other local shows I remember include “The Commander Tom Show”, featuring yet another local weatherman, Tom Jolls. He was no Bob Keeshan (AKA Captain Kangaroo), but he was alright. I remember watching a show called “Dialing for Dollars”, which was basically a show which aired a movie, and after each commercial break, the host, Nolan Johannes, would call up some lucky person and ask them a question about the featured movie. If they were watching and knew the answer, they won the “jackpot”, which rose every time someone didn’t know the answer. The best (and most ridiculous) part about that show was the musical accompaniment by the Johnny and Jimmy Duo. One guy played the accordion and I think the other guy played the organ. It was horrible, polka-like music, and probably very popular in Buffalo. “Strikes, Spares, and Misses” was another one of my local favorites. That was a bowling show, hosted by Buffalo sportscaster Chuck Healy, and it featured only women bowlers (hence the Misses). The winner earned prizes like a refrigerator full of unnatural luncheon meats, courtesy of the local supermarket.

Other black and white T.V. shows I remember watching, which were not local include, in no particular chronological order: “Make room for Daddy” with Danny Kaye, “Father Knows Best”, “Hazel”, “Leave it to Beaver”, “Gomer Pyle USMC” “My Mother the Car”, “My Favorite Martian”, “Rawhide”, “The Rifleman”, “Gunsmoke”, “The Big Valley”, “I Dream of Genie”, “Car 54 Where Are You”, “The Patty Duke Show”, "The Twilight Zone", “Dragnet”, “The Red Skelton Show”, “The Jackie Gleason Show”, “The Jack Benny Show”, “The Ed Sullivan Show”, “The Addams Family”, and “The Munsters”, I’m sure there were more, but those are the ones I can summon up on a moment’s notice. Last night, I watched an episode of “Law & Order” with my mom, and it was about a rock star accused of murder. In one episode, the following subjects came up: drug abuse, child molestation, homosexuality, infidelity, and statutory rape. Soupy Sales would not have been amused. Television has changed.

Written By Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10-19-09

Indignation is the sentiment du jour… Last Thursday afternoon, as I took a break from the chinking, I turned on the T.V. in the kitchen and was presented with the latest as-it-happened catastrophe featured on CNN. It was the now infamous “balloon boy” story. Six year-old Falcon Heene was believed to have crawled into the experimental helium-filled Mylar weather balloon that his father had made, and set it afloat. Fears were that he was in the balloon when it took off. The media circus that ensued was unbelievable. There was constant video coverage of this balloon, which looked like a big tin foil mushroom, filmed as it blew through the sky at 7000 feet. This was the exclusive story on CNN for almost the entire day, even after it was discovered that the little boy was NOT in the balloon. Then, the focus became the search for his spattered remains on the ground, before it was learned that he had been hiding in his parent’s attic through the entire fiasco. Even before they discovered that the kid was safe, I thought this was an awful lot of national attention on what amounted to a local story. I mean, look at what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan right now, or the eight hundred other worthy stories worldwide! The Colorado National Guard was called out, and police in several Colorado counties were chasing this unmanned balloon for miles from the ground. Would the little boy freeze to death at the high altitude? How strong IS Mylar? Balloon experts were assembled and interviewed. It was insane. I can’t imagine how much money was spent on this story but it was probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. As of Sunday, they’re still talking about it, and little Falcon and his family were by then making the media rounds. His father seems like a bit of a flake, especially after I saw some clips of his “performance” on the reality show “Wife Swap”. I have no idea whether this nonsense was just an unfortunate accident or a media stunt (the father is presently being charged with causing this hoax)), but it certainly seemed like a waste of airspace. CNN, the very network that gave this story “wings” now calls it “hot air journalism”. Hmm.

There’s a new movie coming out later this month called “Vampire’s Assistant” and I’ve come to the conclusion that vampires are the new dinosaurs. Remember when Spielberg made the first “Jurassic Park” movie and suddenly, every kid wanted to have a dinosaur? There were dinosaur shakes at McDonald’s, and dinosaur lunch boxes, dinosaur pencil cases, dinosaur-shaped pasta in soup – dinosaurs were everywhere. Even Barney got a pay raise, and he’s not even really a dinosaur … more of a fat, purple hippo. I got really sick of all the dinosaur crap. Now it’s vampires. Suddenly it’s hip to be a vampire. I remember when I was young and there was only one true vampire; his name was Bela Lugosi. Bela may have been a drug addict, but he was one scary Dracula, and I had many a nightmare after watching his films. These days, vampires are the subjects of Harlequin romances. They fall in love, they have feelings, they have integrity, and virtue (ugh!), and they look like Tom Cruise. I take that back, I just watched “Interview with a Vampire” again … the new vampires, like the ones in the HBO series “True Blood”, are BETTER looking than Tom Cruise. Does anybody remember that Werner Herzog film “Nosferatu the Vampyre”? Now that was one ugly ass vampire, and that’s what they should look like. They are the undead; they are vermin who suck the blood of the living for heaven’s sake; they are evil beings from the underworld, they sleep in coffins! They should not look like Zack Efron.

It’s been a frosty October up here in the Great White North, and it was below freezing every night last week. I think I’ll pull the retractable dock up this week, because boating season has decidedly ended. The chinking work on the house should be done in the next few days, and everything else will likely have to wait until Spring. Time to go sharpen the chainsaw, something I just learned how to do, so I can cut up some more firewood for the imminent winter. Watch for those vampire blood milk shakes at McDonald’s. And to the balloon family, and to the news organizations who covered this non event as ad nauseam, I offer this bit of advice: get a friggin’ life!

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/12/09

Last Thursday marked my 54th birthday and for the first time in a while I had a really good one. Shauna threw me a surprise 50th and that was a good memory, but for the past few years, on my birthday I have moped around complaining about the passage of time and my general stagnation relative thereto. October 8th, 2009 started with Happy Birthday banners all over the house. The carpenters gave me a couple of very cool tools for my cordless drill. The lighting guy finally showed up and fixed the glitches in the kitchen lighting, hopefully for the last time, reprogrammed the fancy computerized lighting control system in the bedroom, and also installed the exterior dark sky, low voltage lights which softly highlight the back of our house at night. That lighting does the house justice. I got a call from my mom, albeit because Shauna called her to remind her it was my birthday (she’s a bit foggy these days), but I got a call nonetheless. That was a bonus, as were calls from several other friends with whom I’ve lost touch. I spent most of the day cutting and splitting firewood, which I enjoy doing. There’s nothing like spending a little time with a chainsaw to purge the demons within. My birthday present to myself this year was an electric wood splitter, and that worked like a charm. Everyone told me the electric ones don’t work, but this Ryobi comes with a two year warranty, and so far I am impressed. I’ve got two years to break it. Finally, I ended the day with a couple of glasses of red wine – o.k., more than a couple – and Shauna and a friend took me to Huntsville for dinner. I even got a birthday ice cream sundae, compliments to the restaurant. Nothing says VIP like a complimentary dessert.

The one thing that is just now beginning to catch up with me and remind me that I am no longer the rebel without a clue I once fancied myself to be, is the gradual and widening separation between what I think my body can do and what my body can in fact do. Of course, in general, I’m a little stiffer these days than I used to be, but after the latest wood cutting session, I was a hurtin’ cowboy. Knock on firewood, so far I have avoided many of the crippling injuries my peers have sustained by ignoring their limitations or denying their waning co-ordination. I haven’t broken my leg on an ATV like one of my contemporaries recently did, or screwed up my back shoveling snow as another friend did. Nevertheless, I do finds that Ibuprofin has become my new best friend.

The weather has been, as the Irish say, desperate; very rainy, with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark. We’ve even had a bit of the white stuff, though thankfully none that stuck to the ground. We’re making good progress on the chinking, and we’re over halfway done. As always happens in the fall up here, I delude myself into thinking that there will be a few hot summer-like days before the onset of winter. I leave the boat at the dock, thinking we’ll have that last fall foliage cruise, which turns into, why-didn’t-I-take-the-boat-in-and-put-the-dock-up-when-it-wasn’t-cold-and-miserable …again?! As the Canadian geese point south in their triangles of exodus, and the wind begins to blow the trees bare on this the weekend of the Canadian Thanksgiving, I am surrounded by the things for which I have reason to give thanks: an almost finished house, the love of my friends and family, the comfort of knowing that at least for five or ten more years I can indulge in the delusion that I am still a young man … and oh yes, I give thanks for electric log splitters.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/05/09

When I started coming up to Katrine, Ontario back in the early nineties, it was a fairly quiet summer community. Of late, there has been quite a lot of construction on our lake and on the big lake to the south. The nearby town of Burk’s Falls had a hardware store, a supermarket, a post office, a liquor store, a bar, a bank or two, and not much else. Highway 11, the north/south route from North Bay to Barrie and Toronto used to pass directly through Burk’s Falls, but it was subsequently diverted to circumnavigate the town. Because this diversion severely decreased the traffic through town, businesses suffered. Recently, we lived in that town for over a year during the construction of our new home, and the community didn’t seem to be doing all that well. There were probably half a dozen houses up for sale and the main street was dotted with “For Lease” signs. Well the times they are a changin’ and Burk’s Falls is experiencing a bit of a comeback. Last Monday marked the opening of a Tim Horton’s coffee shop on a lot across from the supermarket and directly across the main street from the police station (coincidence?). As anyone in Canada knows, where Tim Horton’s grows, so grows the community. One of our carpenters recently purchased a home in Burk’s Falls, and a few weeks ago, when I was driving into town for some groceries, I noticed that a traffic light was being installed at the intersection where the Tim Horton’s store is located. A traffic light in Burk’s Falls, now that’s a first! Long range plans call for a new, larger supermarket, a gas bar, and I understand there is even talk of a Canadian Tire store. Before you know it, we’ll have massage parlors, drug turf wars, and an airport. I am frothing in anticipation.

Over the past seventeen years, I have penned over 800 of these weekly reports, and it occurred to me to create some kind of anthology of the better ones I have written over the years, mixed in with accounts of what was happening in my personal life at the same time. My readership has increased substantially since I sent out the first “Hyman Report” to twelve people in January of 1992. Today, I’ll wager at least once a month, as many as twenty-four people read my work. This kind of spike can only be attributed to determination and hard work. Just like Burk’s Falls, I am developing. Most of you probably never read my earlier “work”; well, this is your chance. A book, you say? Is there a book deal … will there be book signings in fifty cities across North America and Europe? Hold on, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. While I’ll admit my life is arguably not all that interesting, there are a few anecdotes I can relay with which some of you may identify or even find entertaining. Most importantly, I think the reports themselves are an interesting if skewed take on the current events of the time. I will go out on a limb and say that, in some cases, they are even amusing. Now that I have opened the floodgates of my popularity by throwing my hat into the Facebook ring, fame and fortune are the next logical steps. Hopefully, this little exercise will be accomplished in three volumes, comprising the early, middle, and late years. Each volume should provide just enough reading pleasure for a week’s worth of reading sessions in the john and there are even a few surprises in store.

In the news last week … Letterman publicly revealed that a CBS producer had attempted to extort $2 Million from him over allegations he’d had sex with some of his Late Show employees. Letterman called his bluff and now, if convicted, Joe Halderman (any relation to the Watergate guy?) is facing 15 years in prison. You know, apart from the embarrassment factor, it’s not as if Letterman was presenting himself as a card carrying member of the Moral Majority, so what was this guy thinking? Typhoon Parma wallops the already beleaguered Philippines, lots of casualties in the latest Indonesian earthquakes, Rio wins the bid for the 2016 Olympics, and not since 1998 have so many banks failed in America. So far in 2009, 98 have gone under. I have put my money in a new bank, it’s called “The Bank of Serta”, and it comes with a free box spring.

Yours ‘til Niagara Falls.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 9/28/09

I begin writing this week’s report on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest of the Jewish holidays, and the Jewish Day of Atonement. I have not been to temple in a long time, so right away I have plenty of atoning to do. Traditionally, Jews fast from sundown to sundown for Yom Kippur, and I find that a meaningful gesture. Though I am not an observant Jew, I fast on Yom Kippur, and I think it is a pretty good practice. At least once a year, it’s not a bad idea to acknowledge my wrongdoings and to strive to do better in the coming year. While I am not likely to become an Orthodox Jew any time soon, the older I get, the more inclined I am to have some kind of faith. I realize that, at least for me, no comprehensive assessment of the world today is possible without some hope and belief that the future survival of mankind is not really in my control. One example of things that worry me: that bonehead Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I watched him spread his special brand of ignorance on Larry King Live the other night, and the guy bugs me. Though I know very little about the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics, I know ignorance is dangerous. I also know everyone is worried about Iran developing a nuclear bomb, but has everyone forgotten that India and Pakistan already have them? And let’s not forget North Korea. Indeed there are enough bombs to incinerate the world one hundred times over, if anyone is foolish enough to use them. That’s I guess where the blind faith part comes in. Brief aside … I find it fascinating that, according to the all-knowing Mahmoud, there are no gay Iranians. Iran is probably the only country without them. It could be the Mecca for homophobes! I suppose Iranians don’t have the messy “don’t ask, don’t tell” problems we’re having in the American armed forces.

9/28/09 – It’s Yom Kippur and I am watching a storm and heavy rain creep up from the south over the lake. There will be no chinking done on this house for the next several days; we need dry weather, above 40 degrees Fahrenheit or the stuff does not set up properly. At this point, we are racing against time to finish this job. It’s hard to figure out where the summer ended and fall began, because the weather has been so strange of late. I am gun shy. Winter comes without much warning up here, and it is not uncommon to get snow in November. Now the storm is in full force and water is pouring off the roof like Niagara Falls. Maybe we’ll have water in the basement again. Big floods last week in Georgia, and the Philippines are also flooded from a recent typhoon. A quickly as it came, the storm is gone, for the time being.

Yesterday, I went out on my little folding boat and took a leisurely row over to a nearby point. A week last Sunday there had been a fire there. Some new owners had been burning brush from their recently cleared lot, and they left to go home without properly extinguishing the fire. Around dinner time we heard someone screaming Fire! From across the lake, and Shauna called the volunteer fire department in Burk’s Falls. By the time I drove the firemen over in my boat, our next door neighbor and his son had already put the fire out with buckets of water. There was so much dead wood on that property that the fire could have burned the house down had the wind picked up. I must say my adrenaline got pumping when I saw all that smoke in trees, just 300 metres from our house. There are laws about what can be burned up here and when. I’m guessing that these new neighbors will be receiving a visit from the local fire department sometime soon to remind them of the rules. Nice to know those firemen are ten minutes away (one of the captains lives on this lake), but a lot can happen in ten minutes.

With a growling stomach I sign off. Time to atone.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 9/25/09

A few weeks ago, while I was in Toronto on my way down to Buffalo, I stopped at the Canadian National Exhibition for a couple of hours. I have now been to the event twice in my life and I love the carnival atmosphere. Of course, there are all sorts of exhibits I do not see, but there is something about the garish colors, the cacophony of the crowds and the rides, and the callers at the midway games that I love to experience. Years ago, when I was a boy, we used to go to Crystal Beach Amusement Park near our Canadian summer home on Lake Erie, and Crystal beach was one of the last of the old-fashioned amusement parks. So endeared was I to the place that I wrote two songs about it. These days the rides are slick and fast, but give me a rickety old roller coaster any day. The big coaster at Crystal Beach was called The Comet, and the first climb gave riders a bird’s eye view of Lake Erie, with Buffalo in the distance. Back in the early Nineties, on the last day Crystal Beach was open, I and a group of my friends made one last visit, and my friend Bob videotaped his last ride on The Comet. Within months the whole park simply disappeared. Rides were removed and the midway soon became a residential development. We still watch that video with maudlin reminiscences of that last day.

“There is a certain wisdom only fun can teach,
I think I’ll always remember Crystal Beach…”

As I write this, we have begun to chink the new house, hoping to be done in about two to three weeks, expecting, as we do, consistently unpredictable weather. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, chinking is the material used to fill in between logs in a log home. In the old days, it was mortar, or clay or mud. These days, the material is a high tech, very effective and easy-to-apply, elastic, caulk-like substance, but with a much greater durability than caulk. First, we lay in thin strips of foam backer rod, meant to displace some of the gap between logs and allow for a thinner bead of chinking to be applied, then we use a bulk caulking gun to apply the chinking. Finally, the chinking is spread into the space with a special tool to create an even seal across the logs. Once applied and cured, it provides a weatherproof seal for the house. Logs typically insulate quite well, and we’re hoping that now that the house has done most of its “moving” and checking (cracking), it will stand solid against whatever the Northern Ontario climate can throw at it. Last winter was a bit drafty in sections of the house, and there are places where rather large gaps have opened up. Logs are very unpredictable in the ways that they move. Some will twist, some will warp. The new chinking is designed to move and flex with the movement of the logs. We purchased the Neville Log Home package because they sold us on the idea that their dead standing logs had done most of their shifting and drying out. Now that Neville has gone bankrupt, I’m beginning to wonder if we were told the whole truth. The amount of sap coming out some of these logs and the severe checking leads me to believe that they were greener than we were led to believe.

“Roller Coaster reservations, you’ve got them, so do I
But this love deserves consideration, and I think this love can fly
On this hot and humid summer night, the sun closes down a blood orange sky

The lights go in in the amusement park; electricity that lovers spark

Cho: Come on decide be mine decide tonight/ Come on get on that roller coaster ride

Put unspoken fears aside decide tonight

Come on decide be mine decide tonight, cause it’s a midway night….”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Openheimer Report 9/18/09

While I was down in Buffalo last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Music is Art celebration on the grounds of the world famous Albright Knox Art Gallery. The festival boasted over thirty bands playing on four stages throughout the day, and while I only heard a brief sampling of what was being offered, I enjoyed the experience. My contribution to the Buffalo music community was to purchase a 3 CD compilation, for the bargain basement price of ten bucks, featuring Buffalo bands from the 2006 festival. There are over sixty songs in the set and though I have only listened to one CD so far, I liked many of the songs I heard. Buffalo has always had a vibrant music scene, and though we usually hear about artists who make the big time, such as Ani DeFranco or The Goo Goo Dolls, there are plenty of good bands who do not make it.

Back in the days when I was young and wild, I used to frequent a music club in Buffalo called The Continental. In the early eighties, when punk and new wave music were just becoming big, this bar was pretty hot. Maybe it still is. Back then, MTV was in its infancy, and music videos played on monitors around the bar. I remember seeing now-defunct Buffalo bands like The Elements, Electroman, Paper Faces, and my favorite, The Celibates. There were moments of extreme joy as we, the collective audience, fueled by beer and cheap mixed drinks, throbbed in a frantic wave of mutual appreciation to songs like “Whipped Cream Girls”. No one but a few forty to fifty year old Buffalonians are likely to remember those bands, but the point is this. Local bands rock, and even though the hair band Eighties was not my favorite decade for music, I was and continue to be proud of my city’s contribution to the national music scene. Many of the really creative local bands typically flame out after a few years, realizing that local popularity or a CD release party is not a guarantee of fame, fortune, or even a decent living. Still, I applaud the fireworks, and to this day enjoy these local battle-of-the-bands-yer-fifteen-minutes-onstage-are-up-bub music extravaganzas. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of those bands will never reach more people than can fill a medium-sized bar, but if you happen to be there on the night they shine, it can be magical.

I was in one of my old Buffalo watering holes about ten years ago, and I saw the former female lead singer for one of those old Buffalo bands I remember hearing at the Continental. I liked her band and thought she was cooler than James Dean, but there she now was, no longer the skinny, sullen bassist for a new wave band, but instead something akin to a soccer mom. Her band was simply a moment in time.

There is a line in the Rolling Stones song “No Expectations” off one of my favorite Stones albums “Beggar’s Banquet”, and it goes something like this: “Our love was like the water that splashes on a stone/ our love was like our music, it’s here and then it’s gone.” Music IS art, and like sidewalk art, sometimes it’s here and then it’s gone. Some of the best music I’ve heard is spontaneous, live, and unrecorded. In the purest form, live music, if you’re listening, forces you to be in the moment. I am reminded of a great line in a book I just read, written by a talented Buffalo writer named Greg Ames … “If you have one leg in the past and one leg in the future, you’re pissing on the present.” One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to be in the present on a regular basis; I think it’s a good place to be. In the meantime, it’s nice to have live music to remind me what that’s like.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 9/9/09

9/1/09 – Yikes, is it Labor Day yet? Sure feels like summer is over, or never started. I got a call from one of the carpenters we’ve hired to finish up our house in Katrine, and he told me that Gravenhurst, about an hour south of us, had had a damaging tornado – I think he said it was an F2. He was bidding on some rebuild work down there. Vaughan, just north of Toronto got hit as well, rendering 38 homes uninhabitable. I don’t remember a summer with this much rain or cold weather, and now, I watch with some interest as the hurricane season fires up. Hurricane Bill has already soaked the Maritimes, and the Frisbees of bad weather are beginning to hurl themselves towards North America. I understand a pretty sizeable F4 (Jimena?) hit the Baja Peninsula last week. Summer in Buffalo is always short-lived, and about the second week in August, when we get our first north wind, that’s when we know we will soon be seeing the leaves turn. Up in the Great White North, Fall is ushered in by the invasion of one of my most unfavorite birds, the grackle. The Hell's Angels of the bird world, these miserable black birds travel in flocks and chase away all the other birds. It’s a fitting way to say farewell to summer.

9/4/09 – I’m back down in Buffalo, where I have just sold Dad’s car, and spent last Monday packing up and giving away most of his clothing. I remember him wearing a lot of that clothing, and it was weird to give it away. Lately I have been making an effort to pare down some of the personal possessions in our Chapin Pkwy. house, knowing as I do that a lot of this stuff needs to go. Mom was pretty good about getting rid of junk in the house, but over the last ten years, quite a lot has accumulated in the basement and attic. We must have thirty half empty cans of paint in the basement, as well as remnants of old carpeting and wallpaper, vestiges of long past remodelling projects. Of course, Mom is still living in that house, and I wouldn’t remove anything she might notice or want to keep. Still, there is A LOT of stuff stashed away in this big old house. There must be some kind of service that collects not-so-valuable but usable stuff from a large house and liquidates it for you, but I haven’t found it.

Mom’s 90th is next week, and I will stay down here until then. Shauna ordered chinking and backer rod for the new house which will be delivered to Buffalo late next week, so I have an excuse to stick around. We originally thought we’d have the materials sent directly to Katrine, but the shipping costs as well as the time delays with customs brokers was going to make that an expensive and complicated process. Speaking of cross border hassles, I needed to mail a letter up to Canada, and I went to one of those Mailbox places to buy a stamp. They wanted $1.60 for ONE STAMP, over double the actual cost of the postage, claiming the post office charges them a premium. And we wonder why they are closing post offices all over the place! I hope I can fit twelve five gallon pails of chinking along with 4600 feet of backer rod in the SUV. We should have Dad’s estate matters squared away by the end of next week, and my duties as an executor will soon be less demanding. I can’t say my time in Buffalo has been all that bad. I have enjoyed spending time in my childhood home, as well as being walking distance from my best friend.

Notable deaths: Ted Kennedy finally succumbed to his brain tumor last week; tests confirm that the anaesthesia drug Propofal killed Michael Jackson (big surprise); 60 Minutes founder Don Hewitt died, and acerbic Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunn also bit the big one.

9/7/09 As I end this report, I am sitting in the living room of my family beach house on the north shore of Lake Erie. This belonged to my grandfather, and has been in our family for over seventy-five years. I have many happy memories of summers spent in this house, but I have not spent the night here in six or seven years. I am looking forward to falling asleep here, because something about the sounds on this lake at night puts me right to sleep. A belated Happy Labor Day! Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/23/09

Always a few steps behind the general public, I recently joined Facebook. I am now officially a face. Having been faceless all these many years, it’s good to finally have an identity … you know, something for some criminal cyberweenie to steal. A few years ago, I joined MySpace, for no other reason than that Shauna was doing it and she signed me up as well. I still have a profile somewhere in that labyrinth of MySpace profiles, along with demos of four of my songs, but I don’t think I’ve changed anything on that site since we first put it up. I now understand that MySpace is “so yesterday’s news”. Desperate to free myself from the fetters of complete anonymity, I have therefore joined Facebook, and in so doing have boldly proclaimed: I AM NOT NOBODY! However boldly I proclaim this, it is the subject of some debate.

So now I’m a face, and my anemic profile is out there for all to see. It’s just a picture of me, and no birth date, no special likes and dislikes, no favorite television shows; not even a favorite color. I prefer to cultivate the mystery of my non-existent life … keep ‘em guessing. Do I like Cheerios or Fruit Loops … or neither? I did not realize that so many people I know are also faces, but every day I am greeted by at least three or four new old faces who request that we be “friends”. The odd part about that is that I thought we already were … that is, before I lost touch with just about everybody I knew. Here they all are, coming out of the virtual woodwork to get re-acquainted in cyberspace. I have opened up Pandora’s Email Box. In theory, I am all for sites which promote any kind of non-criminal social interaction, and it’s honestly good to once again make contact with some of these people. On the other hand, it’s just a little spooky how many people, through whatever search engine or networking tool is incorporated by Facebook, have “found” me. I now have a wall, and messages from people with whom I have not spoken in thirty years. It’s a little like the high school reunion I recently attended, absent the angst or the necessity to respond.

What I was not expecting was the immediacy of current information. No longer do I wonder “what
ever happened to so-and-so”, because whatever happened to him or her is spelled out, in detail, by the hour. By joining Facebook, I have become privy to a whole slew of current (albeit brief) posts I might never have seen otherwise. Apparently, e-mail is a thing of the past, or in any event, not as likely to reach the entire network (read my two or three friends). Somehow, my being friends with a few people has opened me up to the social airwaves of just about everyone I know. One friend is indignant about the recently proposed health care plan, another reports that her husband is having an affair. There’s a photo of my niece holding her sister-in-law’s baby girl. Naturally, I posted a rude and off-color comment. People like me probably shouldn’t be allowed to post comments on Facebook; I suspect the Face Police will soon be on my cyber tail.

Up until a few years ago, my dad was class agent for his Cornell Class ‘32. Recently, when I was sorting through his papers, I came across just about every correspondence he’d had in the past ten years with his classmates. Most were in the form of letters, but some of those codgers were using email. The correspondences were, for the most part, eloquent, well thought out missives, and the stories they told were often entertaining and interesting. I still maintain that there is something more satisfying about receiving a good old-fashioned, carefully written, page-long letter. Facebook is even faster food than email. I haven’t yet become a “twit” or whatever Twitter users are called, but I understand that that is the state-of-the-art medium for brevity and immediacy. I look forward to someday becoming even less communicative, while reporting my every move in an effort to “tell all”. I am sure that, several years after it is out of fashion to do so, I will embrace my inner twit. There is a reason why the phrase “Too much information” has become so overused. Some information is in fact not really information..

I could spend months, maybe years, getting caught up, but the sad fact is, I HAVE lost touch with many of these folks and they have lost touch with me. As much as I would love to keep up with everyone I’ve ever known and liked, the older I get, the shorter has become the list of those I feel are really interested in my life. Likely, many want to know if I disgrace my family and friends by getting caught fooling around with someone named Bambi, who really is a deer, or if my pulpy remains are recovered after I fall into a hotdog making machine, or should I suddenly be rocketed to notoriety when I am viewed on the internet interviewing Bin Bombin’. Short of that, I doubt many but my closest friends really give a flying Walenda about my day to day. Regrettably, I’m just not all that interesting. That said, anyone so bored that he or she wants to spend the next month catching up on my life full of unevents need look no further than The Oppenheimer Report … it’s a real page turner, and available at a blog site near you.

1:11 PM Gone Fishin’. J.W.O. Jr.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/17/09

I have loved powerboats since I was about three years old. When I was a toddler my aunt bought me a toy which was a small scale model of a wooden runabout with little battery-powered outboard motor. I used to play with it in the bathtub all the time. Many of the boats around our summer cottage on Lake Erie were kept in boat lifts when they weren’t being used. I made a lift for my toy boat out of an upside down foot stool with string tied across the legs for slings. My very first “real” boat was a little red wooden craft made by a local carpenter, perhaps four and one half feet long, and I passed many a hot summer day floating around in that little boat in Lake Erie. I think I was about five or six when my parents bought me a used 10’ Feathercraft aluminum boat, the boat which later became the legendary “Raging African Queen,” and therein began my serious boating career. I have had many boats since, but that Feathercraft aluminum dinghy was the boat I loved the most.

Funny how some memories stick with you. I remember the day they bought it used, from a man on the next bay. The details are sketchy, but I remember seeing it floating in the water, and I remember the excitement I felt. I now owned a boat, which I could row and in which I could carry several other passengers. I loved that little dinghy. Over the next thirty years, that boat would have five very different outboard motors. The first motor my father came home with was a small outboard that one of his friends had given him. It was an Italian motor called a Girelli, and it was probably one of the first jet-propelled outboards. The friend had bought it for duck hunting, because he thought that, being prop-less, it would be good in the weeds. It was not, and it was an entirely unsatisfactory motor on all counts. It was heavy, hard to start, loud, slow, and every so often let out a backfire that shot flames though the end of its pistol grip. I was afraid of that motor and it did not last long. The next motor was my favourite. It was a 1961(+-) Johnson 5 1/2HP and I owned that motor through most of my youth. It always started with one or two pulls, and with that motor I travelled hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, through some very rough seas. Regrettably, it was stolen one summer many years ago. The next two motors were about as bad as that first Girelli. One, I bought on a whim from a used outboard shop. It was a 1953 5HP Scott Atwater “Bail-O-Matic” (see above photo) and it was a noisy bucket of bolts that spit oil, took about fifty pulls to start, if it started at all, and was loud enough to wake the dead. My friends all made fun of me, but I suppose that motor paid for itself in the amusing stories it generated. We nicknamed it “Bobo” which was an allusion to a joke about sodomy. My antique outboard phase was short-lived. The next outboard was a 1980s Evinrude 4HP which was an awful motor, had a poorly designed throttle lever, and a pull cord that periodically broke. I beat the crap out of that motor, sold it, then bought the motor I’ve had for the past fifteen years, a very reliable Yamaha 3hp.

Finally, the story of how the “Raging African Queen” came to be named. Over the years, the Feathercraft went by several names. When I was a boy, I named it “Wasp” after the aircraft carrier. It then became the “Asp”. Years later, and shortly before Bobo met its untimely demise (I did keep the engine cover which I now use for a unique lampshade), one of my artist friends, who happens to be gay, decided that he would paint a new name on the transom, in yellow Rust-o-leum. We’d been joking about renaming it “The African Queen”, and someone (not me) decided that “The Raging African Queen” was an even better name. Before I knew it, there was my artist friend Peter, painting that name on the back of the boat. Rust-o-leum is forever. The name, like the paint, stuck, and from then on, this legendary aluminium boat, which I’d now owned for over thirty years, and which was still providing us with hours of boating fun, became affectionately referred to as “the Queen”. A while ago, it too was stolen off our beach, and I was crestfallen. The idea that someone would steal a boat with that name painted on the transom is unbelievable to me, but someone did. We did some pretty silly things with and in that boat. I distinctly remember one night, with several other passengers aboard, probably somewhat intoxicated, driving that boat around half full of water. At one point, I had to jump out of the boat in waist deep water and rescue the motor before the ship went down. One of my favorite boat photos is a rear shot of the Queen, pulled up on shore, Bobo mounted on the transom, covered in seaweed, tar, and other lake grime. Boating with attitude. I keep hoping that someday the Queen will resurface, but now, these many years later, I think the prospects are slim. Funny, the things we hold dear in life.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheiimer Report 8/12/09

A week later, I’m still buzzing from the WNY Poker Run. I can still hear all of those high performance V-8’s roaring as fifty-one powerboats took off from Erie Basin Marina. I have not done all that much boating over the past fifteen years, but that event brought back some fond memories. Ever since I was a little boy, with my first outboard-powered dinghy, I’ve loved going out in a boat when the water was rough. I used to take that little dinghy out in all kinds of weather. The trick was getting out past the initial breakers without sinking the boat. After that, the sky was the limit. I think my friend Bob and I missed our calling, because we both love to go out on boats when the water is rough. Perhaps we would have made good offshore racers – it’s in our blood. Even in this last poker run, there were probably fifteen or twenty boats in our group which were faster and perhaps even more seaworthy than we were, but on the last leg of the run, when we headed out into the open lake towards Angola, I believe we passed all of those boats. And it wasn’t even that choppy on the lake.

When Bob and I were kids, he had a red 16’ fibreglass Starcraft with a 60 HP outboard, and I had a 13’ Boston Whaler powered by a 40HP outboard. I think Starcraft and Boston Whaler should have hired us to market their boats, because we definitely beat the living daylights out of those two boats over a series of summers. We would go out on Lake Erie when small craft warnings were in effect and jump waves. From time to time, we’d chase lake freighters to jump their wakes. Lake freighters are surprisingly fast when they get up to full speed, and they’re not easy to catch. That was an adrenaline rush because, once you’ve committed to a freighter wake jump, there’s no turning back. I remember several jumps wherein I knew I’d made a huge error in judgment, and it a strong testimonial to the seaworthiness of the Boston Whaler that I am alive and in one piece today. I should have been wearing a kill switch. I never got a photograph of my boat leaving the water, but I can tell you what it looked like seeing Bob’s boat jump. There were several occasions when the bottom of his outboard was several feet out of the water.

Over the years, we upgraded our boats, but our love of rough water remained about the same. We’ve toned it down a lot, because we now wish to avoid back problems. The perfect jumping weather was right after the wind had died down, and the rollers were a specific distance apart. I suppose it was a little like finding the perfect wave for a surfer. On that rare occasion when the wave patterns were perfect, one could, if one was a skilful driver, leap from wave to wave, get incredible air, and land softly in a trough. It was a little like flying. Of course, more often than not, conditions weren’t perfect, and the landings were bone-jarring. During my Boston Whaler days, I had many an unsatisfactory landing, and more than a few passengers still complain to this day about their uncomfortable rides in that boat.

I gave up jumping as a driver a long time ago, but still love the rough water. I now own a very seaworthy 20’ Hydra-Sport, but it’s not designed for “getting air”. Bob has had much better boats for that, and he has had many. The 27 foot Magnum he now owns is a great boat in rough water, but my favorite remains his 18 foot Donzi. Bang for your buck that boat was crazy fun in the rough water, and I remember more than one exhilarating ride off Point Abino, near my parents beach house on Lake Erie..

This Poker Run, albeit a relatively tame ride in comparison to some I’ve had, conjured up all the memories of the fun we’ve had over the years in our many boats. I miss the Raging African Queen. More about that in another report.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/4/09

Last Saturday morning, bright and early, my pal Bob picked me up at my parent’s house in Buffalo and we drove over to his boat house at Rich Marine on the Niagara River. There we picked up his classic, 27 foot 1972 Magnum Marine sedan powerboat and headed up the river to the Erie Basin Marina for the annual Western New York Offshore Powerboat Association Poker Run. For anyone not familiar with the event, poker run is not a race, but rather a course with a series of checkpoints. In the run I attended, there were five checkpoints, and the participants picked up a playing card at each checkpoint. At the end of the run, the drivers handed in their cards – they’re not allowed to look at those cards until they've handed them in -- and the driver with the best poker hand won a cash prize. Really, the event is an excuse for people with really big boats to enjoy them, in the company of other like-minded boaters. Bob has invited me to this event at least ten times, but circumstances always precluded my attendance. I’m so glad I was able to make it this year.

Thankfully, we had the best possible weather of the summer for boating. Sixty-five MPH in the rain is not a whole lot of fun on a boat, but Saturday was uncharacteristically (for this summer) sunny and warm. After we’d signed in at the marina and were clear on our course, it was back to our boats to head out to our first destination, down the river to Grand Island. There is nothing quite like to sound of fifty-one offshore power boats firing up their high performance V-8 engines all at the same time. The roar was music to my ears. We were divided into two groups, the under and the over 65MPH boats, and each group had a pace boat. Bob’s boat was in the slower group and our pace boat was named “Deeply Disturbed”. How appropriate for Bob and me! The fast boats left first, and it was a rush to watch those high powered floating rockets take off. Some of the boats in this club are capable of top speeds in the range of 140 MPH. Of course, with high performance V-8’s come high performance problems, and often one or more of these boats will experience some kind of engine problems. One of the guys in the club gets ribbed a lot because his enormous catamaran seems to have an inordinate amount of engine problems. The other guys in the club nicknamed him “Peace Bridge Joe” (Joe’s not his name) because his boat never seems to make it past the Peace Bridge and out into the open lake without experiencing some kind of engine problem. I think he was trouble free for this poker run. I’ve attended several offshore powerboat races wherein we were on a boat, moored and watching the race from a fair distance. This poker run was much more satisfying, because we were actually running along side a lot of these big boats, at least before they took off and left us in their wakes. For a powerboat enthusiast such as me, this was nirvana; I had an inside look at some very exotic offshore boats, and not just on a trailer in a boat show.

The run officially ended at a beach bar down in Angola, N.Y. on the south side of Lake Erie, where we all moored, had a bite to eat, and enjoyed the rest of the day before cruising back to Buffalo. The cruise back was excellent, with just enough lake chop to make the ride interesting, but not bone-jarring. After the run, the power boat club hosted a barbecue back at the Erie Basin Marina, wherein the winners were awarded their cash prizes. In keeping with the good vibes of the day, all cash prizes were donated to a favorite charity of the boat club, which enables disabled people to enjoy various boating events. Some people, mostly the idle rich, trail their big boats all over the country to attend these poker runs, and that certainly would be fun. I was in my glory just to have been a passenger on one of the handsome old Don Aronow classics. I had great fun tooling along at 50-65 MPH, watching the big boys blasting around much faster in their $500,000 Apaches, Fountains, and Cigarettes, while churning up the water on the open lake. Thank goodness I didn’t have to pay for the gas! Three days later I’m still buzzing from the adrenaline rush. Thank you Bob for including me in this outstanding event.
–Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.