The Oppenheimer Report 11/29/10

Though I approached Thanksgiving in Buffalo this year with some trepidation, it proved to be a wonderfully entertaining holiday. Arriving at the hotel late Wednesday night, I expected mayhem, because the night before Thanksgiving in Buffalo is typically the biggest party night of the year. Several years ago, when we stayed at the Holiday Inn up the street, there was an all night party going on in the next room, and I eventually called hotel security to break things up. I’m fairly tolerant, but I drew the line when loud, sloppy drunks repeatedly slammed into my door at 2AM. It looked as if this year might be a replay of that celebratory chaos, because The Hampton Inn, our hotel this year, is even closer to Chippewa Street, and Chippewa is Buffalo’s “party central.” When we arrived, there were scores of inebriated young “adults” in the hotel, coming and going. Although there was quite a lot of noise in the halls, the room itself was quiet, and there was no need to complain. I looked out our 4th floor window, overlooking lines of kids waiting to get into the various packed bars, and for just one brief moment, I pined for the days before I became a fuddy duddy. Then again, I can’t ever recall waiting in line to get into a bar. For me, the bar experience does not include waiting outside in the freezing rain while some cretin bouncer scrutinizes fake I.D.s. I have always avoided popular hotspots like the plague.


Thanksgiving dinner entertainment this year included my sister’s three grandchildren, and I marveled at the mess three toddlers can create in less than an hour. I am also amazed at the amount of baby stuff with which my nephews now routinely travel. It’s like they were a stage crew setting up for a rock concert, and the first floor of my mother‘s rather large house was completely filled with baby paraphernalia. Ever the family archivist, I made a point of photographing and videoing as much of the kids’ activity as I could, and they proved to be an endless source of humor. My mom was very much “with it” for the dinner and for this I am especially thankful. As one of the more rambunctious little girls teetered on the edge of a chair, Mom even had the presence of mind to warn the parents. It’s hit or miss these days, and Mom could easily have been absent through the entire event. Lewy Body Disease is extremely confounding and can really throw cold water on any family gathering. As I think back, dementia has more than once presented itself at these Oppenheimer Thanksgiving dinners, and these multi-generational family gatherings are never dull. I remember one Thanksgiving many years ago, when one of my favorite octogenarian uncles walked up to me and out of the blue, smiling proudly, implored me to “feel his butt.” He’d apparently been doing some kind of ass exercises prescribed to him by his geriatric butt coach, and was very proud of his newfound firmness. A bit embarrassed, I jokingly suggested to him that people might talk, but he then became very insistent, grabbing my hand and placing it firmly on his butt cheek. I gingerly squeezed and nodded approvingly. I’m only thankful it wasn’t an even more embarrassing appendage I was directed to grab. When in Rome.

As an added bonus to the Thanksgiving mirth, after the dinner when we returned to our hotel, there was a wedding party milling about in the lobby. Just after we walked in the door, a middle-aged man came running up to the front desk from the elevator, totally befuddled and wearing a shirt and socks, but absolutely nothing else. Somehow, he’d managed to lock himself out of his room in this compromised state and needed another room key. Personally, if I were him, I might have taken off my shirt and wrapped it around my waist, so that my bare ass was not prominently displayed to the general public in a busy hotel lobby, but that’s just me. As we waited for the elevator to go up to our room, he sheepishly came up behind us and when the elevator door opened, I sighed and said “Go ahead, we’ll take the next one.” I was tempted to make him ride up with us, or worse, to wait for the next elevator, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I took pity on him. As we waited for the next elevator, I looked at the bride and groom, who had just witnessed this bizarre event, and I asked, “Did I do the right thing?” to which the bride laughed and replied, “Absolutely!” The next morning, as I stumbled into the breakfast room for my complimentary powdered eggs and Tang, who was the first person I came across, sitting alone? You got it, naked man. He looked up and as soon as he saw me, he immediately looked down, like our dog Jasper after she’s been caught peeing on the floor. It was priceless. I was half tempted to walk up behind him and say something like “Psst …you can run but you can’t hide … we have photographs and we gave them to the bride and groom for their wedding album.”

All in all, a special Thanksgiving.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/22/10

I must be “retahhdid” as some of my friends in Boston would say, because I have a tendency to photograph exotic cars I see while I’m driving around in Toronto. It’s one thing to see these cars in an auto show or in a showroom, but it’s quite another to see and hear them driving around. The other day, on my way back up north, I spotted a rare Porsche Carrera GT on Avenue Road and grabbed my digital camera, which I leave locked and loaded on the passenger seat. I was drooling, and actually followed the guy for several blocks, just to watch this work of art in motion. I always wonder how someone could drive a car like that around the city; how do you ever get it out of first gear? There’s a lot of talk about prohibiting cell phone usage in cars, and of course we’re not supposed to text while we’re driving, but hey officer, nobody said anything to me about taking photographs! Then again, nobody told me not to read the newspaper while driving, but I guess that’s not a good idea either. Once, driving a friend to work in an L.A. traffic jam, I noticed the guy next to me doing just that; reading the L.A. Times in his moving vehicle.


Prince William and “commoner” Kate Middleton have announced their plans to wed, and all I can say is, it’s about time we got some fresh blood in that family. Too much inbreeding and pretty soon we’re going to start getting royals with the gray matter of that Appalachian banjo player in “Deliverence.” I’ve always thought Charles was a bit of an oaf. I will never understand how he ever could have dumped Lady Di for that troll Camilla ParkYerBowels . Of course, I have been glued to the TV set for any updates on the wedding ever since I heard the news . Ever the “Dysfunction Detective” I stand ready and waiting to report any cracks in the engagement bliss. Will they go for the cozy seclusion of Westminster Abbey or will they choose something larger, like the backyard of Buckingham Palace? Will they find true love or crash and burn in front of the entire world as did Chuck and Di? Certainly all eyes are now on these young lovers and the pressure will be enormous. What a joy it must be to be a royal! Fun fact: 750 Million viewers watched Chuck and Di marry back in 1981. I wasn’t one of them. Perhaps Elton John will rewrite another one of his songs for Will and Kate. I am frothing in anticipation.

What else happened last week ... Pat Burns, NHL legend and former coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, died after a long battle with cancer. Two teams that Burns once coached, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadians, played each other last Saturday night, and in keeping with their tendency to suck, the Leafs lost yet again. Despite having shown a hint of promise earlier in the season, they are once again in or near last place. On a happier note, the Buffalo Bills won yet another game … that’s two so far this season.

Wednesday, we head down to Buffalo for (American) Thanksgiving in Buffalo. Sadly, this might be the last one celebrated  in my Buffalo home of fifty years. I look forward to meeting a new addition to the family; my youngest nephew and his wife just had a baby boy. Once again, Thanksgiving dinner at the Oppenheimer’s will span four generations, and that alone is something for which to be thankful.


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/15/10

Last weekend, my pal Bob and I resumed an annual custom which we had sidelined for about four or five years … we spent the night in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Most people  assume that we would go there for a concert or to gamble in the casino, but not Bob and me. We travel to Niagara Falls to experience the scary wax museums. We joke with our wives and friends about how we’re going to go wild and paint the town red in a full blown Bacchanalian frenzy - after all, Niagara Falls Ontario is Vegas North (well, not exactly) - but the truth is, we haven’t really done much of that sort of thing in over thirty years. We did go to the “old” casino once about five years ago on one of our visits, but it was not what I would call fun. It reminded me of a video arcade without children, or laughter. While I understand that in theory gambling in a casino is supposed to be entertaining -- and I’m sure that for some people it is -- the idea of handing over my money to someone and then not getting anything in return is, to say the least, unappealing . I’m way too cheap to part with my greenbacks when the odds are so heavily weighted in favor of the casino. Besides, having recently spent over three years surrounded by and paying building contractors, somehow I feel as if I’ve already had that experience. The fact is, I’m not much of a game player in general. No sir, I want more bang for my buck, and there were at least three or four chamber of horror wax museums just begging for our entertainment dollars.




You have to understand, Bob and I are experts on the subject of scary wax museums, and we’ve probably been to every one in Niagara Falls. There’s something about wandering around in an unlit labyrinth, not knowing when some macabre display will flash before your eyes, that spells excitement for me. Sadly, this year House of Frankenstein turned out to be the only chamber of horror worth its salt. Typically in the past, each one of those museums employed live “growlers,” as Bob and I dubbed them, whose job it is to lurk in the shadows and surprise the unsuspecting spectators. Clearly, with the downturn in the economy, there is a profound shortage of growlers, and this was disappointing. While a dusty, poorly lit exhibit of some wretched victim being eviscerated by a werewolf is o.k., in my opinion it pales in comparison to the adrenaline rush provided by a well-trained growler. The best part about the growlers is that you can mess with them. I think Bob actually tackled one during a previous visit, and we came up with all sorts of creative ways to make their job harder (for instance, responding to their attack with an air horn). This year, I was bound and determined to photograph one of them, which is no mean feat given the element of surprise and the darkness. Call it the thrill of the hunt. Of course, I forgot my camera for the visit to House of Frankenstein, and that turned out to be the only one with live entertainment.



Naturally, in between wax museums there was some imbibing, because as we all know, alcohol reinforces one’s suspension of disbelief. As well, we needed to analyze the experience while it was fresh in our minds. I’m glad we had a few beers, because each successive chamber of horror turned out to be a little bit lamer than the previous one. I insisted on retrieving my camera from the hotel room for the last two forays into hell, and of course those venues were completely growler-less. I did take a lot of pictures anyway, probably more than I would have had I been sober, and mostly of Bob giving me the finger. I interpret the old saying “you can never go home” to mean that nothing stays the same. The final insult was that, after our last overpriced “museum” visit ended, instead of being returned to the dark and eerily lit entrance, with the mysterious and creepy monster trapped inside a shaking crate beside the ticket booth, we were spit out into the salad bar at the restaurant next door. Talk about throwing a wet blanket on the terror! Perhaps my enhanced memories of past growler-filled terror chambers might have been a little exaggerated, but the truth is, it doesn’t get much better than a Saturday night in Niagara Falls, Ontario accompanied by my best friend. We cruised the garishly lit midway which is Clifton Hill, we hit a couple of bars, we did some people watching, and we laughed. Time takes no prisoners; even a couple of bozos as fortunate as Bob and I have had our share of worries and tribulations. Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the sugar waffles. As we rode the Ferris wheel that overlooks the sparkling tourist town, I looked out over the dimly lit falls in the distance, and as I listened to its distant roar, I reminded myself that life is pretty darned good.



“We’re traveling around in the circle of Life

We turn to the left until we come to the right

We’re traveling around in the circle of Life

The past is the future with a little more light…”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/8/10

The lawnmower is in the shed for the winter, the leaves are raked and burned, the rain barrels are emptied and stored, I took one last frosty ride in the porta-bote to run the gas out of the little outboard and put that away for the season, and after the snow last week, I finally took up the dock. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful, and I was able to accomplish most of the outdoor cleanup which is so much more unpleasant when the cold wind is blowing. In about three weeks, it will probably start to get ugly up here in the Great White North, and more than one of our resident weather experts has predicted a snowy winter. Something about furry caterpillars, or was it squirrels wearing snowshoes? I have the Weather Channel doplar radar for our area set up as a “favorite” in my web browser, and with one click of the mouse, I can watch the weather blow in from the West. Bring it on Jack Frost, I’m ready. Heeeeere’s Johnny (cryptic reference to “The Shining”)!



Last Tuesday marked the mid term elections in the U.S. and it was described as a bloodbath by more than one political pundit. In a news conference the next day, Obama himself called it “a shellacking” for his party. America made a right turn as Republicans won back the House and made some headway in the Senate as well. As I predicted, those starry eyed “Yes-We-Cans,” filled with hopeful elation when the evil/stupid king was dethroned two years ago, have now turned on the new “good” king like a pack of wolves. With unemployment still hovering well over 9 per cent, Americans blame Obama and his donkeys for not making the mess go away. I’m not an Obamaniac (although his command of the English language is a refreshing change over the profound ineloquence of his predecessor), but come on people. Are we all so naïve as to assume that this is one man’s (or one party’s) fault? If you lived larger than you can afford, if you bought a house that was beyond your means, or if you profited handsomely from the Wall Street lottery in the 80s and 90s, then didn’t you and I willingly contribute to the downfall of our economy? Contrary to popular belief, America is a democracy, and we the electorate screwed it up. Maybe Bush left the barn door open, but it was open long before he took office. The fact is, we say we want leadership, but when it starts to hurt, we scream for the next guy. It’s political suicide to propose painful solutions. Here’s a novel idea: level the playing field. Absolutely, limit campaign contributions, but ALSO make every winning candidate accountable for his or her ridiculous promises. No excuses, if you lie, and don’t deliver on an outrageously unrealistic campaign promise, your war chest is depleted by (pick a number) $50,000. Companies have performance reviews, and employees are held accountable, why not politicians as well? Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply look up a political candidate’s record for delivering on his or her promises? Then, we the voting public, might become invested in the democratic process again instead of voting for the bonehead who makes the biggest promises. Accountability is a vanishing characteristic. They say Obama hasn’t done a good job of pointing to his successes. That might actually be true, and the fact is, I haven’t got a clue who started the mess we’re in, or who is capable of fixing it. I do know that I have grown weary of all the lying S.O.B.s who claim it was the other guy. But my point is that we the voters share the blame for this pandemic of bad leaders. Toronto just elected a new Mayor, Rob Ford, and the big issues in this last election were high taxes and a bloated city government. Ford’s slogan: “Stop the gravy train!” Judging by his girth, he’s no stranger to gravy himself, and allegedly he had a somewhat checkered career as a councilman in Etobicoke. He may soon be eating crow with a little gravy on the side. O.K. my bi-annual angry political rant is over (hah!).



The Federal Reserve is about to dump another $600 Billion on the American taxpayers in order to “stimulate” the economy. Time to start printing money again. In five years, the U.S. greenback will be worth about one sheet of Charmin. If you’re flying, you might want to avoid taking an Airbus A380. It seems one of their Rolls Royce engines exploded in midair near Singapore spewing debris all over some Indonesian island. A volcano on Mt. Merapi in Indonesia has erupted for the second time in a month, spewing super-heated pyroclastic gas and ash on the surrounding population. Hurricane Tomas just barreled through Haiti and Cuba. Boy those Haitians really can’t catch a break, can they? First they’re hammered by the big earthquake in January, which leaves over a million Haitians homeless, and then, when they’re already living in tents, BANG!, a hurricane. Kinda makes a couple of months of snow look like a piece of cake, eh? (that’s Canadian for “know-what-I-mean?). Next week, we’re back to “happy” reports.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/1/10

Happy day after Halloween. It snowed Saturday and Sunday up here in the Great White North, and as I finish writing this week’s report, our dog Jasper is furiously barking at a very confused squirrel who I believe has misplaced some of his nuts on the snow-covered landscape. I haven’t even taken up our dock for heaven’s sake. The good news is we have a retractable dock now; we can take it up without getting in the water. I will necessarily do that this week because several winters ago, I procrastinated and having been delayed for a few weeks in Toronto, I came back up in late November to find the dock frozen into the lake. We had to use a chainsaw to break it loose. The weather up here can really catch a person off guard, and the day after I took the boat back to the marina for the winter, we had a terrific wind storm. This year, I’m actually looking forward to winter because we have an ATV. For the past three winters, I have watched the crazy ice fishermen zooming around doing donuts on our frozen lake, and I was envious. This year, I can join them, but not for the ice fishing part.


I’ve got to start reading the NY Post on a regular basis. My brother-in-law, generally a Wall Street Journal sort of guy, suggested I check it out after actor Charlie Sheen set some kind of a NY Post record by making the front cover three days in a row. On a recent binge in NYC with an escort( hooker) named Capri, Mr. Sheen was apparently found naked in a restaurant bathroom, with cocaine smeared all over his face, completely disoriented and confused.  Ms. Capri allegedly refused his carnal advances (restrooms are SO romantic) because he failed to ante up with the $12,000 he had promised her, and now I understand she is suing him for wrongful imprisonment, or some other equally litigious charge. Wow, how do I become a celebrity escort? For that kind of money, I’d do Flipper! Sheen also did a reported $7,000 damage to the upscale hotel room he trashed. Sounds like his character in “Two and a Half Men” isn’t much of a stretch. Of course, we must remember that tabloid journalism is not generally fair, and there IS no privacy in the life of a celebrity. Boo hoo! I’m guessing that even I might raise a few eyebrows if I was gallivanting around NYC with a couple of high-end hookers, then finally got caught in the bathroom, coked out and naked. I think that falls into the “Oops” category. About the most exciting thing I did recently was change the oil in my snow blower.


What else is news … there was an apparent plot to bomb some synagogues in Chicago, involving parcel bombs originating in Yemen. As Seth Meyers quipped on SNL, an unsolicited package postmarked Yemen and sent to a U.S synagogue might have aroused some suspicion, but who knows? The al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole took place in a Yemeni port, although Sudan was blamed for the attack. Increasingly, it seems we are engaged in a war of information and the battlefield is invisible. Once, a long time ago, I suggested, in a tongue in cheek fashion, that the mob would be a great ally in this shadow war. Tony Soprano would be able to find that pesky Bin Bombin’, and he’s not limited by those complicated rules of engagement. I’ll bet there would be less collateral damage as well. More mob, more CIA, less casualties.


Not a good week for my teams. In hockey, both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres are struggling, although the Leafs do look a lot better this year than they have in the past four or five years. Having lost another overtime heartbreaker, this time to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Buffalo Bills are now 0-7. Like I said, the Bills are a serious incentive for their fans to participate in attitude-adjusting tailgate parties.


Finally, I got no feedback about Halloween costumes, but I read that, hands down, singer Lady Gaga was the most popular Halloween costume this year. No doubt ... the woman is a goddess. A lot of people apparently chose to be that bonehead Snookie, from the hit reality show, “The Jersey Shore,” and I heard that comic Ellen Degeneres went as Snookie’s hair. That’s amusing. Still haven’t carved our pumpkin. Is it bad form to carve a pumpkin after Halloween? Discuss.




Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED