The Oppenheimer Report - 12/26/11

Years ago, when Shauna and I were still making our annual pilgrimage out to Banff, Alberta we stayed at the same resort for 12 years. In keeping with her tendency to exhaustively research any facility in which we planned to stay, Shauna chose a place called the Douglas Fir Resort and Chalets for its view, its facilities, its competent staff, and for the good room rate she was able to negotiate. Banff hotels tended to be a bit pricey in those days; at the time, it was a popular international destination for a lot of European and Japanese tourists. With the most recent economic downturn, I’m not sure it still is, but the Canadian Rockies really are spectacular. Anyhow, our stays at the DFR became longer and longer. We grew very fond of the staff, we knew all of the maintenance guys, all of the front desk clerks, all the managers, and got along famously with just about everybody who worked there. Then one day it all changed. A new manager was hired and within a short time, he managed to undo all the goodwill everyone else at the resort had built up. He not only alienated us, he became legendary in the community for his assholiness. The man was a creep and a lousy manager to boot. Within one year from the time he took over at the DFR, all he managed was to drive away every good and effective employee the DFR had to offer. For our last two years out there, that jerk made our stay miserable, largely because he made his staff so miserable. I suppose he resented that we were regulars and that we had for years been given a proprietary rate, though we were off-season customers and really were no trouble. The final straw, after seeing all of our favorite staff members defect one by one, was when this bozo started spreading vicious rumors about us in a feeble attempt to turn the staff against us. We stopped going out to Banff for many reasons, but first and foremost was the negative impact this one man had on the place we loved to stay. They say that karma is a bitch, and the other day, we got word from several of our friends out in Banff that the prick was finally fired. It was as if Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz had just dumped a pail of water on the wicked witch, so consistently gleeful were the reports we received from local residents. We came to find out that nobody in Banff liked this guy. All his machinations and misdeeds were finally revealed when the last original employee recently quit and the Japanese owners were apprised of some “discrepancies” in his exit interview. Now, I’d be astonished if anybody in the community will provide him with a favorable reference. First, North Korea’s Kim “Little Elvis” Jung Il croaks and within a week, the much despised-manager of the DFR is summarily removed. Talk about your two-fers! The DFR was an excellent facility, family-friendly, with a great location on Banff’s scenic Tunnel Mountain, and we sincerely hope that they soon regain their fine status as one of the better facilities in the Banff resort community. It’s remarkable what one person can do to destroy years of goodwill.

I don’t recall, but I believe I ended the last report of 2010 hoping that 2011 would be a better year. Certainly the struggling economy has to be front and center. When I reflect on the past year, the events that stick out in my mind are the natural disasters: the F5 tornado that flattened Joplin, Missouri, the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami that hammered Japan and caused the Fukishima nuclear power plant disaster, the record-setting floods in Australia, and the uncontrollable wildfire that literally incinerated the town of Slave Lake, Alberta. It was a banner year for Bieber and a train wreck for Sheen. Dr. Conrad Murray’s conviction sent a sobering message to other pill-pushers in star-f-cked LA: physician do no harm. It was a year of the Arab Spring, when like dominoes, tyrants were toppled one by one. It was the year when angry countrymen around the world took to the streets to demand accountability from their governments, a time when leadership in the United States and Europe seemed largely absent. Americans occupied everything from Wall Street to Main Street, but little changed. I watched the movie Too Big to Fail the other night, which is a re-enactment of the events that led up to the 2008 mortgage backed securities crisis. It made me bristle. Never before did I grasp the financial Armageddon we almost set in play with our fiscal irresponsibility. It was the year my mom died. Other notable obits: Apple’s Stephen Jobs, Muammar Gaddafi, Liz Taylor, and Wilson Great batch (who?). Finally, 2011 was the year I made it my daily practice to acknowledge my thanks for each day I am alive and healthy, married to my wife, safe and free, and blessed with good and honorable parents and friends. My hope for 2012 and beyond is that we deal with our universal crises in leadership, that America fixes her broken democracy; that somehow the unthinkable happens and peace and harmony become “viral.” And yes, as always, I aspire to be a better, kinder man. Like that’s going to happen. Happy New Year to one and all.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 12/19/11

Some Christmasy thoughts …

I learned a new word the other day: Krampus. My cartoonist friend Patrick from Canmore, Alberta mentioned the word in a Facebook post, prompting me to look it up. I found out that Krampus is the Anti-Santa, and he looks like the demonic creature from that scary movie Jeepers Creepers. I always assumed that if children were on the naughty end of the naughty-nice spectrum, Santa put coal in their stocking, and that was that. Getting dissed by Santa seems humiliating enough, right? Apparently, that’s the Disney version. Krampus is the dark little secret of Christmas, and it dates way back to the you-ve-got-to-be-tough-to-play-with-the-big-boys-Christmas-isn’t-for-pussies-or-whiners, nihilistic Germanic mythology. Remember, Hansel and Gretel, and that evil, deceptive witch who tried to eat them after their stepmother banishes them to the woods? Those Germans know how to tell character-building bedtime stories. According to Austrian folk lore, Krampus helps Santa out by roaming the streets shortly before Christmas to weed out bad and undeserving children. When he comes across a naughty child, he stuffs him or her in his bag, and takes them back to his lair, presumably to peel off their skin with his razor sharp teeth and eat them alive like string cheese. O.K., perhaps I extrapolate. It’s a win-win for Christmas, because Santa can then focus on being jolly and rewarding the truly deserving, while Krampus clears out all the bad karma AND gets enough meat to fill his freezer for the next year. Basically, it’s a Wes Craven movie with a happy ending. I say forget roaming the streets; just troll the toy section of any Wal-Mart, plenty of brats there. I wonder if Mr. Krampus could be persuaded to take out some of the naughty adults as well. How about eviscerating that greedy former CEO from Confederation Life featured on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago? Maybe he could give Bernie Madoff-with-the-money a nibble as well. Eat the rich; joy to the world. Occupy Wal-Mart!

Recently, I was at the supermarket reading the ingredients on the label of some seemingly healthful food, which, as it turns out it clearly was not, and in the background there was that canned Christmas music we hear everywhere. The Twelve Days of Christmas was playing, perhaps sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks, and I found myself involuntarily humming the tune as I read the ingredients. All those unpronounceable chemicals: “…on the fifth day of Christmas my can good gave to meeee, 12 grams of fat, monosodium glutamate, sodium bisulphate, nose hair of troll, and a flat-u-lence guar-an-tee. Don’t judge me, we all have different ways of coping during the holidays; this is mine.

Tomorrow night we light the first candles of Hanukkah (Quadaffi is the only name I know that has more spellings), so Happy Chanukah to all my fellow tribesmen, and a merry Kwanzaa, Christmas, etc. to the rest of you. While Christmas has never been a favorite of mine, mostly because it puts so much pressure on families to give and receive stuff, I do embrace the sputtering hope of universal goodwill. Any holiday can be an opportunity to open our hearts right? Any day of the year for that matter. I’ll probably call my friend Edmond who is homebound in Buffalo and pretty sick with MS to remind myself that his attitude is usually better than mine. All I want is what I’ve got, and maybe a little less. I leave you once again with the holiday exclamation I coined last year: Ho! Ho! Ho! and don’t be one! And remember kids, quit yer whining about that new XBox game you want or you may end as an hors d’ouevre at the Krampus Christmas party!

Peace on Earth … sounds good to me.

The Oppenheimer Report - 12/12/11

We’re slowly making progress on the pump house after a few minor setbacks, including the necessity to divert an underground spring. That spring may have been the reason our old shed became a leaning tower of Pisa. It’s always something. I remember when they first broke ground to build this house, we got a call from the builder to inform us that he had hit bedrock while excavating for the basement. We were on the phone with him as they drilled pilot holes and blew up some large chunks of granite for removal. No matter what the building project, my experience has been that 80% of the time or more, there are complications. Luckily, this setback was not particularly expensive. Now the footers are set and the structural framing for the floor is down. Hopefully, the weather will co-operate and we will start stacking logs next week. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Our carpenter’s assistant is a crusty old guy (three years older than I) named Rob, who lives nearby. The other day, after we’d taken the debris from the old shed to the dump, I gave Rob a ride home, because Rob doesn’t have a driver’s license anymore (I thought it was better not to ask why). He’s quite a character and I get a kick out of him. To me, he represents the one extreme of the folks up here we affectionately refer to as “colorful locals,” and I’m guessing he was a bit of a wild man in his heyday. A jack of all trades, Rob makes his living as a trapper. He also raises some rare breed of turkeys. Not all turkeys are fit to eat and these turkeys (Royal Palms and various iterations thereof) are more about decoration than food. When we got to his house, he asked me if I’d like to see his birds. He seemed rather proud of them, so what was I going to say? To me, turkeys are waaaay over on the “ugly ass” end of the bird spectrum, just a notch or two above ostriches and vultures, but when Rob opened up the coop, I was surprised by what I saw. These turkeys, apart from the fact that they were enormous, were pretty good looking, I mean for turkeys. He told me that they are dumber than wood, which kind of flies in the face of what I heard on TV just before Thanksgiving when there was that big, turkeys-are-smart-and-have-feelings movement to boycott their omnipresent slaughter. Anyhow, it was a learning experience, and I have a newfound respect for one of Nature's uglier creatures. As Rob so eloquently put it: “Ya gotta watch out how you handle ’em ... Them f-ckers’ll break your arm if you’re not careful.” Duly noted.

Have you ever been ass-dialed? It’s been happening to us a lot lately. People inadvertently dial your number on their cell phone, perhaps by sitting down on the phone and accidentally pressing “redial” or a speed dial number, then you hear muffled conversations through their pants pockets. We now have several answering machine messages with five minutes of this and I wonder if any embarrassing conversations have ever been recorded, albeit through someone’s pants pocket.

In the news, perhaps you caught the lunar eclipse last weekend? If you didn’t, there will be another one in 2014. Russian strongman Vlad Putin didn’t win any popularity contests last week as angry Russians took to the streets to protest what they deemed to be election fraud in the latest parliamentary elections. Putin’s United Russia Party seemed to maintain a clear majority in the election, but Russians are crying foul. I doubt that 30,000 protesters in Moscow will spark a Russian Spring, but what is telling about these protests is that the response from the police was noticeably less violent. Compare this to the blood spilling freely in the streets of Syria at present. Badly coifed former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in a Federal prison last week. His hair alone got him five years. Let that be a lesson to all you corrupt politicians out there. BTW, how many Wall Street bankers can you name who went to jail? Britain has effectively isolated herself from the rest of Europe by refusing to tow the party line on the Euro, and some experts feel the long term consequences of that decision will be disastrous for the British economy. Only twelve shopping days left til our credit cards are maxed out. Did you see all those pub-crawling Santas roaming around in Manhattan last weekend for SantaCon 2011? Now that’s my kind of event! Talk about confusing the kids! Look Mommy, Santa’s puking in that Salvation Army pot! Truly this is the most wonderful time of the year.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 12/5/11

Last week, I mentioned that we were in the process of rebuilding our pump house, and foolishly, I anticipated that the weather would hold out. This building project was delayed because our log guy had to work around hunting season. It’s hard to pull logs out of the woods when every hoser and his brother is out there shooting at anything that moves. Tuesday, in the teeming, cold rain we tore down about 2/3 of the old pump house and burned most of the wood in our fire pit by the lake. I brought the landscape trailer around to the front yard so that when we tore off the roof, I could trail the debris to the dump. I figured that we could finish the demolition on Wednesday and then reconstruction could begin this week. Wednesday morning, I woke up bright and early and whisked open the curtains to see that we were experiencing a blinding snowstorm. By 11AM, we had 8” of snow on the ground and most of the debris I was going to take to the dump was now buried. Funny, because radar showed a storm but forecasted that it would blow well south of Katrine. Unfortunately, predicted paths and actual paths are sometimes vastly different. Looks like we’re going to be doing some shoveling and I’m hoping that the lake effect storms off Georgian Bay don’t stray north and hammer us before this project is completed. We’ll be craning the logs down to the building site and that could be a little difficult in two feet of snow.

Herman Cain couldn’t take the heat so he got out of the kitchen. Indignant over the dirty Washington politics, he opted out of the Republican race last week. Apparently, his campaign manager didn’t properly vet him when it came to the part about skeletons in the closet. I have no idea whether Cain would have been a good candidate, but my guess is that if he couldn’t handle a little Washington mudslinging in the primaries, he probably would have folded if he made it to the big show. By the time the Washington press was finished with Ross Perot, he looked like a whiney flake. I liked Dana Carvey’s wonderful impression of Perot on SNL. Sadly, I fear elections have become more about who has the best spin doctors, and the candidates most capable to actually lead aren’t interested in doing the dance.

Out of curiosity and I suppose greed, the other day I participated in an online auction called Quibids. I’m sure some of you have heard of it. I was intrigued by all the ads telling me that someone had “won” a 46” TV for $2.50, and I wanted to see what was really going on. I don’t really need any more stuff in my already cluttered existence, but I was curious to see what the deal was. The way it works is as follows. First, you purchase bids. The minimum order is $60 for 100 bids. Once you have bids to spend you can go to the online auction and see what is up for grabs. This is not a site for people with a gambling problem, and I found myself down $30 within an hour, because I became swallowed up in the bidding process before I completely understood the proper strategy. The big ticket items are the hardest auctions to win, and there are a lot of hidden fees and service charges even if you do win. I procured a $10 Walmart gift card, but spent $2.40 in bids to get it and then there is an additional $2.99 in shipping charges. Not such a great deal. Bigger ticket items usually draw more bidders and as a novice, I quickly realized that some of those bidders are pros. Still, it is possible to get some big ticket items for a small fraction of their retail value if you get lucky or bid skillfully. I look at my $60 “investment” the same way I look at the money I fritter away at a slot machine in a casino. It’s not an intelligent way to spend money, but I try not to spend too much time assessing the value of my entertainment dollars. My buddy Bob and I spent a fortune on chamber of horror wax museums in Niagara Falls, and I would not say that was great value, but at the time, and under the influence of alcohol, I enjoyed myself. What is most interesting to me is to watch as bidding wars take place. Using programmed bidding - you can set the price at which you begin bidding and have a program automatically make as many bids as you chose - people often spend fifty to one hundred bids to win something, only to be sandbagged by some schmuck who just happens to get lucky and jump in at the end using only a couple of bids. I imagine a lot of bidders are looking for bargains for the holidays, so I’m guessing Quibids will do well this season. I heard that after Black Friday (why black?) and Cyber Monday, Americans had spent $52 Billion so far for holiday gifts. Do you think Santa uses Quibids? Everybody loves a deal.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 11/28/11

I watched the Macys Day Parade on TV for the first time in a long time. Behind the annual and world famous Buffalo Turkey Trot, that parade ranks highly on my list of Thanksgiving traditions. In the past ten years, we usually missed it because we’d arrived in Buffalo at 3AM Thanksgiving morning and were still asleep, or because we were scrambling to get out of Toronto in gridlock traffic. The one good thing about no more Thanksgivings at my parents’ house is that we also missed the frenetic scramble to travel on a major holiday. When I turned on the TV Thanksgiving morning, cup ‘o joe in my hand, the first thing I saw was a giant Sponge Bob Squarepants floating by Macy’s department store. Now that’s entertainment! Did you know Sponge Bob has a Facebook page and 28 Million followers? I have about 120 Facebook “friends,” about 114 more than I have in the real world. Here’s a Helium filled balloon fun fact: one half mile of fabric was used to make the Kung Fu Panda balloon. Snoopy as the WWI Ace is still my favorite balloon. I love that parade. How often do you see giant floating cartoon characters parading through Times Square?

Since police have forced the evacuation of the various makeshift Occupy Wall Street Hoovervilles throughout North America, I have decided to pick up the torch and form an Occupy Katrine protest. Granted, our little town of Katrine ranks low on the corporate greed scale, but I feel honor bound to make my symbolic gesture in support of the plight of the countless victims of Big Money. I’m having a little trouble because, other than one church and the marina, there isn’t really a business district here. We own a piece of land near the marina; maybe I’ll occupy that. Honey, where’d you store my 40 Below sleeping bag? One of my friends made me laugh the other day when he referred to this ubiquitous protest as “Occupy Everywhere and Bitch About Everything While Tweeting on the $400 Drone That Mom Gave Me” movement. A bit cynical perhaps, but  containing a kernel of truth as well.

At present, we’re involved in two small building projects which, if all goes as planned, should be completed before the big snow flies. As of Friday, we have an almost-completed garden shed in which to put all the essential landscaping tools which have for the past three or four years accumulated on our front porch. The next project is the demolition and reconstruction of our pump house, which at present, looks somewhat like a wood-framed parallelogram. That project begins this week, and I am looking forward to getting out my holiday aggressions with a crow bar and a sledge hammer. Ho friggin’ ho.

Last week, for no particular reason, I found myself craving some retro TV, and I PVR’d (new verb) two old shows I remember from my early youth. The first show I recorded was The Rifleman starring Chuck Connors. Some of you are old enough to remember him playing the tough-but-fair-single-father vigilante Lucas McCain, whose wife probably died in a gun-related accident and whose family later went on to found a French fried potato empire in Canada. We used to call him “Mucous” McCain, and my favorite part of the show is, hands down, the opening credits. You know from the get go that Mucous is one “bad ass mo-fo” simply by the way he glares at the camera as he indiscriminately fires off his rifle walking down the main street of town. I can sum up the plot of every episode of The Rifleman this way: Bad guys ride into town, Lucas struggles with the dichotomy of his good and evil selves, but ultimately ends up vastly outnumbered in a gunfight wherein he shoots all the villains to death (and probably a few stray town folk) with his wild west version of an automatic weapon. The whole show is a send up to Mucous pureeing a bunch of bad guys with his lightning fast, repeat action Winchester rifle. The filler in the middle is ludicrous. The second show I recorded was the uber-wholesome Father Knows Best starring Robert Young (Marcus Welby) and Jane Wyatt, who later went on to play Mr. Spock‘s mother. It’s interesting to me how deeply television was in the morality business back in the 60s. Kind of a departure from today’s prime time TV shows like Jersey Shore, where skanks and hos rule. I find it interesting that there are now two contemporary retro shows on TV, Mad Men and Pan Am which attempt to paint a more realistic picture of life back in the 60s. Now that “Black Friday” has come and gone, the starting pistol for the holiday retail madness, I eschew the holiday craziness, instead immersing myself in the narcosis of must-see Christmas TV. Two vastly different holiday scenes stick in my mind: Jimmy Stewart coming to the epiphany that his really IS a wonderful life as he stands on the bridge overlooking snowy Bedford Falls, and Dan Akroyd in Trading Places, disheveled and drunk on a bus, wearing a ratty Santa suit, ravenously tearing the flesh off a whole salmon with his teeth.

I’m bracing myself emotionally for the season of artificially induced good cheer. Remember when parents got into fist fights to grab the last Tickle-Me Elmo doll on the shelves? Ah, those were the days! I can’t wait to learn what holiday atrocity will present itself this year. I hope nobody beats up Santa again.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/21/11

Every so often, a hot button topic comes up that prompts me to resurrect one of my many pet peeves. Last week, there was a piece on the news about a Canadian woman suffering from advanced ALS who is asking the courts to grant her an assisted suicide. According to one poll, 46% of Canadians think assisted suicide should be legalized and another 30% feel that it should be allowed under certain circumstances. Like all right to life issues, this is a contentious debate, and a recent study in Canada brought the issue to the forefront by suggesting that the majority of Canadian families are woefully unprepared to make end-of-life decisions. Having just finished this complicated journey, I implore my readers to be pro-active about it. Talk to your loved ones, old and young, and figure out a way to confront these difficult decisions about end-of-life care. At least have the conversation, because like it or not, it will come back to haunt you if you don’t. I feel the rights of the individuals and their families take precedence in cases of terminal illness. For the most part, I’m pro choice, though I’m not sure I'm completely on board with euthanasia. Euthanasia is only one of the options for end-stage care, and certainly not the only alternative. I get the argument that there is a huge potential for abuse with euthanasia, especially when elders are involved, but I think in a case like an ALS victim, this really should be up to the patient and his or her family. Medical ethicists and religious experts can debate this issue until the end of time, but when people suffer horrible, painful, extended terminal illnesses, I think they should be allowed a morsel of dignity. If I am of sound mind, I want the right, if possible, to control how I die. Morphine baby, and lots of it.

When I first heard about Jerry Sandusky and last week’s Penn State football scandal, I thought Sandusky was being accused of fooling around with college players on the Penn State team. I thought to myself, that was inappropriate and wrong, but the victims were adults, and capable of making their own decisions. When I found out that Sandusky was caught sodomizing a 10 year old boy and I heard him in an interview saying he was just “horsing around” I was genuinely appalled. Some people think Catherine the Great was “horsing around.” So far, 20 victims have come forward to accuse Sandusky, and maybe this is the tip of the iceberg. Now some coach in Syracuse is under investigation on unrelated sex crimes. Pedophilia is pretty close to the worst crime I can think of, and if Coach Paterno knew that his assistant coach was doing these horrible things and did nothing, well, I think that is wrong. He in fact allowed a pedophile to continue to offend. Two thousand Penn State students rioted in the streets when Paterno was fired, angry that their icon was let go in disgrace. People, get your priorities straight! Paterno had a stellar 46 year career as coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, but he looked away and children were hurt. Here’s something else that just sounds wrong: I read that the 10 top execs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earned $12.8 Million in bonuses last year. Pay is down 40% since the 2008 crash, but WTF, didn’t we the taxpayers bail these bozos out to the tune of $170 Billion?! And I understand that those “Super Committee” clowns failed to come up with ANY of the necessary $1.2 Trillion in cuts. Hard to gripe about European leaders when we’re just as bad or worse. I say we form a committee to oversee the committee. Ugh. On the other end of the decency spectrum, did any of you see the story about Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s recovery over the past eight months? She’s the Arizona Congresswoman who was shot in the head by a deranged gunman. Now, less than a year later, she’s walking and talking again, and her astronaut husband videotaped her courageous journey back. He has written a book about it as well. I love hearing these stories about strong individuals fighting adversity. I’m not sure I agree with Mrs. Gifford’s politics, but wow, what a strong and inspiring woman.

Finally, there was a story on the news the other day about animal rights activists who feel we should not eat turkey on Thanksgiving. Turkeys are apparently more intelligent than people understand, and some feel they should not be slaughtered for our food. Does this mean I have to stop eating dolphin as well? This (American) Thanksgiving will be the beginning of the rest of my life. I am thankful for what I have had, and I embrace the ever-changing maelstrom which is time and space. I guess it’s time to dig out Mom’s killer sweet potato recipe and quit my whining. I am thankful for so many things, including that I have this outlet for my thoughts and feelings, and that some of you indulge me and share those thoughts and feelings with me. Thank you to my twelve loyal readers, and to my Yankee friends, have a good bird. To my Canadian cronies: gentlemen, start your snowblowers!

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/14/11

Noteworthy date: 11/11/11. A shout out to all the veterens who have fought for our country. Thank you for my freedom.

Down in Buffalo last week for a meeting with the estate lawyer and some other people, I spent the week sorting through more papers and personal effects, making the difficult decisions about what to keep and what to toss. So many photographs! And everywhere there are notes, postcards, or letters in Mom’s or Dad’s handwriting. Dad wrote so many things down. He had one little notebook I found in his desk describing various fox hunts in which he participated. Why did he do that for heaven’s sake? These days, we’d call those accounts “tweets” excepting that I’m not sure for whom those unspectacular notes were intended. I suspect that the ever popular Kim Kardashian has a much bigger following. “I like just bought the most bitchin’ shoes!”

Somehow, I had compartmentalized the loss of my parents. Of course I grieved when they passed away, but a little voice in the back of my head said “Stay focused, there’s a lot to get done now.” Gradually, what was our home for over fifty years is now being struck down like a stage set. My childhood home is now a real estate listing, and that is just now starting to soak in. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, and given that this was my favorite holiday of the year, the one I was lucky enough to spend every one of the last 53 years celebrating at 140 Chapin Pkwy, Thanksgiving 2011 is going to be weird. Cleaning out the freezer I found some turkey stuffing from last year’s celebration, and I thought I’d take it up to Katrine to have on Thanksgiving this year, but like so many things I left behind, it’s still in that freezer.

Here’s an interesting story. While I was down last week, our listing agent called me up to warn me that she’d be walking some people from the Buffalo News through the house. They are going to be featuring the house in an upcoming weekend real estate publication called Home Finder and they wanted to walk through to take some pictures. I have an aversion to history that dates back to several insufferably boring history teachers I had in high school, and I have never really learned much about our house. Strange, considering I’d lived there for 25 years of my life. It turns out that the architect, Edward Austin Kent, who designed many of the prominent buildings in Buffalo, was also noteworthy for being the one and only Buffalonian to perish on the Titanic in 1912. Our house was built in 1911, and it was likely one of Kent’s last commissions. The story goes that when Kent, who by all accounts acted heroically in the last hours of his life, was helping an elderly lady named Mrs. Helen Candee onto one of the few lifeboats available, she handed him an ivory miniature of her mother to hold onto in his final hours. Mrs. Candee survived, and later, when Kent’s body was recovered, the ivory miniature was found in his pocket, and subsequently returned to her. History means much more to me when it becomes the story of exceptional individuals.

Mini rant. With the latest debt crises in Europe, it is clear to most people with even a tenuous grasp on reality that the party is over. Austerity measures are painful and widespread. Fortunes have and will continue to be lost. Still, there are riots in the streets and everyone seems to think that this is someone else’s problem. Chris Collins, the Republican now ex- Erie County Executive was given his walking papers last Tuesday night when he was defeated by pro-union Democrat, Country Comptroller Mark Poloncarnz. Had I not been down in Buffalo on election day, I probably wouldn’t have blinked an eye, but this particular election was to me symbolic of what is broken in American (and world) politics. I defy our proposed leaders to actually do the unpopular thing and lead. So far I have not seen a presidential candidate who comes close to fitting the bill. Clearly, we’re all going to pay more taxes and services will be cut; I simply want someone to show some responsibility and state clearly how we can navigate through this mess. I’ll wager that most of the uncertainty in financial markets is directly related to the fear that leaders don’t know how or are too afraid to make the tough decisions. Collins treated Erie County like a business, and he made a lot of unpopular decisions. He was by many accounts, arrogant and not very likable. As best I can tell, Collins lost because he cut spending in Erie County and didn’t sugar coat the pain. He did what he said he was going to do, and that is apparently political suicide. He lost the beauty contest. I will be interested to see if Mr. Poloncarnz improves the welfare of the residents of Erie County by keeping his campaign promises.

This year, my Thanksgiving will be a tribute to the memory of my parents. Mom and Dad, thank you for making my life so wonderful. No more whining (for now). Nothing lasts forever: it’s time to form new traditions. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/7/11

Two stories about the bowels of humanity. First story: In the “New Words” department: Kar-bash-ian. It’s the latest blood sport in Hollywood! Kim Kardashian divorced her husband Kris Humphries after around 70 days and everyone (read me) is righteously indignant. Not as short-lived as the Rodman/Electra nuptials, and hey, at least she gave it a chance. Another new word: Kar-cash-ian.  Kim earnestly denies any ulterior motive in wedding earnings, rumored to be in the vicinity of $17 Million, and insists she married for love. Selling the television rights to your wedding is a bit of a red flag, but who am I to judge? Second story: A divorced couple in Western New York is presently fighting over the estate of their deceased teenage daughter. The estranged father, who stiffed on child support while girl was still alive, and who never even chipped in for the funeral expenses, feels he is entitled to a piece of the action. Now that’s class.

Kent Couch from Oregon is planning on an aerial flight to Iraq in a lawn chair attached to helium-filled party balloons. So far his longest flight was from Oregon to Idaho, about 200 miles. This Iraqi trip, in which he’ll pair up with an Iraqi daredevil, is about 400 miles, and will require higher altitudes as well as oxygen masks. Let’s ignore the fact that any moron with a rifle could probably clip his wings … Iraq? If my geography is correct, isn’t that right next to Iran? Didn’t we just rescue (read pay money to Iran to release) some Americans who bumbled across the Iraq/Iran border? I found it interesting that the story indicated that Couch’s wife was all for the stunt. Trouble in paradise? Is there a life insurance policy? May Allah go with you.

In American politics, Herman Cain, The Great Black Hope, is starting to get the predictable bad press as his political enemies start to perceive him as a credible threat for the Republican nod. Allegations of sexual harassment are starting to surface (3 so far), and may scuttle him before he can gain real momentum. Anybody remember Gary Hart? I remember he had a yacht called "Monkey Business." It might be a witch hunt, but with the right spin doctors, it could be fatal to Cain’s bid. Some pundit suggested that the bad news was leaked by Democrats, because Democrats hate black conservatives. There was much discussion about the similarities to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas scandal back when Thomas was being vetted for Supreme Court Justice. I wrote a very lame rap parody about that scandal called It’s Not the Meat It’s the Motion Denied which, thankfully, no one has ever heard. I’m confused about what kind of a leader we need to guide us out of this mess we‘re in. Recent history does not suggest that Washington outsiders get the job done. Obama has certainly hit a wall, and we all remember what a crappy president Jimmy Carter made. The Perots, and the Trumps, and the Cains all sound like good leaders when they’re campaigning, but none of them can handle the Washington cluster f-ck when the going gets tough. I think we need someone dirty (again). Remember that infamous campaign slogan from the 70s? “Don’t change Dicks in the middle of a screw, vote for Nixon in ‘72.”

More problems at that Fukishima nuclear power plant in Japan, where there is new evidence that nuclear fission is still taking place in the crippled plant. I always figured it would be human error or a terrorist attack that precipitated a major nuclear power plant disaster, but once again, Mother Nature beat us to the punch. The Greek debt crisis continues to threaten other European economies, as well as North American markets, and this week’s government shenanigans didn’t help matters any. Andy Rooney, curmudgeon/writer who was one of the last living pioneers of television, died last week at 92. Pretty good timing on his part; didn’t he just quit 60 Minutes a few weeks ago? Further to my discussion about “ethical oil” in last week’s report, I just read that there are there 24 billion untapped barrels of oil under N. Dakota and Montana. Holy Beverly Hillbillies Batman! Who needs Libya; that’s enough oil to keep Los Angeles going for months. With the big oil rush bonanza, I can just see those marketing guys spinning their slogans: Come to North Dakota, it’s not just a miserable, frozen tundra populated by simpletons wearing trooper hats anymore (I get all my cultural information from the Coen brothers). Wow, I really could have had a V-8.

The November winds are blowing hard as I write this report. Glad the dock is up and the boat is safe on dry land. Based on the La Nina surprises that have already occurred elsewhere in North America, I’m bracing for the deep freeze sometime soon. Regards from the Great White North!



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/31/11

Happy Halloween gentle readers! Did you attend a costume party over the last weekend? As some of you may have learned from past reports, I used to take Halloween very seriously. One of my favorite costume creations was my Sinead O’Hellraiser (featured above), an interactive costume destined to encourage embellishments from my onlookers. It started out as a bald mask onto which I glued toothpicks, followed by some serious make-up. I believe there was a picture of the Pope around my neck, torn in half. By the end of the night, after a bit of imbibing, my head became a receptacle for other people’s hors douvres. I distinctly remember walking into my favorite bar in Allentown with chunks of meat, cheese, and broccoli mounted on my head. So many memorable Halloween parties! One year, I attended a roving party; ever been to one of those? Someone rented a school bus and a driver, and twenty or thirty of us drove around from bar to bar in costume. The trick with parties like that is to wear something that is booze-friendly. You don’t want something too cumbersome, or involving a mask which gets in the way of beer consumption. Try stepping up onto a school bus dressed as a giant cucumber. That year I was a Sabre-ette, one of the Buffalo Sabres’ short-lived cheerleaders. Dressed in blue spandex tights, a cheap wig, and of course my vintage Sabres tee shirt covering over-sized balloon breasts, I looked like a cross between a decomposing Mae West and extra from the movie Beetlejuice. Halloween is in my opinion the one day of the year wherein one is encouraged to discard one’s dignity … something I seem to do with great facility.

Holy lake effect, is it winter already?! Thursday night, weather junkie that I am, I checked the Weather Channel radar for our area. I have it page-marked in my “Favorites” file, and there it was, a big pink and baby blue blob creeping up from Bracebridge. Friday, when I took Jasper out for her morning elimination, the outside temperature was 28F and there was frost on the ground. Jasper looked up at me as we walked out the door as if to say “Can‘t I just go on the rug?!” Time to plug in the heat line for our water supply (we pull our water from the lake) and bring up the retractable dock. So far we haven’t been affected by the huge snowstorm that just made it’s way up the east coast, dumping 25 cm of sloppy wet snow on parts of Massachusetts and Vermont. I read the other day that Dublin Ireland had one month’s worth of rain in a 24 hour period. This is all Al Gore’s fault.

St Louis and Texas are in the World Series, making it even less likely than it otherwise would be that I will watch my annual five minutes of baseball. There was a big earthquake (7.2 on the Richter Scale) in Turkey near Iranian border. Herman Cain has not yet been voted off the island, Obama released his latest jobs bill to “fix” the stagnant U.S. economy, and the really good news is that experts predict America will avoid a “double dip” recession. Does this mean the bleeding has stopped? I’ll believe that when the banks start lending money again. I watched Don “The Humper” Trump interviewed the other night, and his opinion is that this is a Catch-22 situation. Government regulators are hamstringing the banks who in turn won’t make loans that involve even marginal risk. NOW they get choosey! So whose fault is it that we’re mired in this economic paralysis, the banks or the government? Last week the Dow skyrocketed about 340 points on the news that Europe has finally come to an agreement to solve their looming debt crisis (see Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal). Have you followed any of the Michael Jackson/ Conrad Murray trial? Last week it was up to Dr. Murray’s defense team to plant reasonable doubt, and their contention is that Jackson, an established drug abuser, gave himself the lethal dose of Propofol. Doesn’t seem plausible, but after the O.J. trial, I gave up making predictions. These days, justice seems to be up for grabs. Here’s a zany new expression I’d never heard used before: drunkerexia. At a university in Calgary, Alberta some female students are starving themselves all day so they can drink booze all night and not gain weight. Breakfast of champions. And I thought I was stupid in college. O.K., perhaps I was a little stupid in college.

You should have seen me in that Sabrette costume. I was hot.





Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/24/11

However you spell his name, Momo Ghadhafi, is now officially Libya’s ex-despot. Much was made of the decision to air video on the news of his last moments alive, but this didn’t bother me. In a world where any twelve year old can play absurdly violent video games, I think that horse is already out of the barn. Was he killed in the midst of a firefight, or did somebody make the executive decision to put a bullet in his head? Does it matter? I suppose it does if Libya plans to call itself a free country, governed by Islamic law, but Momo lived by the sword, and it is not surprising that he died by the sword. After what he did to his own people, not to mention the terrorism he sponsored throughout the world, I’m surprised they made it quick. Meanwhile Tunisia, the country that jump started the “Arab Spring” movement, just held a free election. Perhaps that young Tunisian martyr who set himself on fire and started this tidal wave of change did not die in vain. Can you even imagine self-immolation? I hear it’s all the rage in Tibet these days.

Now that we’re running out of brutal dictators to oust (Assad, I hear you’re next on the list) it’s time once again to focus on problem celebrities. Lindsay Blowhole is cruising for another stay in the “big house” having failed to perform her required community service as punishment for her bad behavior. I think it was an appropriate sentence for Lohan that her community service involved working at a morgue; clearly our troubled little starlet is headed in that direction . Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen, who do you think will crash and burn first? Celebrity’s a bitch. By the way, the ratings are waaaay down for Two and a Half Men, since Sheen left the show. I caught a new episode the other day, thinking that the excellent supporting cast would take up the slack, but Ashton Kucher, Charlie’s replacement, simply doesn’t cut the coke. The other night I had the pleasure of watching a celebrity roast of Sheen, hosted by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Wow! In my life I have never seen a roast that brutal.

“Ethical oil” - I love that phrase. Just because it’s oil we’re not buying from our OPEC friends doesn’t mean it’s ethical. There is much controversy and growing concern that the Alberta oil sands are generating unacceptable environmental hazards, but does not all energy production “break a few eggs?” Who knew wind energy was going to be a problem? I just read an article about how close proximity to wind turbines can lower property values. I thought it was just the bird issue, but some residents who live close to wind farms claim they are noisy and disruptive and that they cause health problems. As well, some banks refuse to offer lines of credit secured by a house in close proximity to a wind farm. Solar energy is expensive and problematic, especially in areas where sunshine is in short supply (like Buffalo). Geothermal energy sounds great but has numerous setbacks. We looked into it for our house, but it was not the right solution in our case. I watched an interesting segment on the news about plans to put a giant turbine in the Bay of Fundy to harness the incredible energy generated by its tides. Apparently they’ve had trouble developing a turbine strong enough to withstand the force of that legendary tide, but it makes sense that this should work. Of course, it will probably cause fish genocide. It’s always something. I think cow farts have unrealized potential. We harness all that methane and it’s a win-win scenario … less greenhouse gas and more energy to boot. It’s time to invent methane-capturing cow diapers, or perhaps we simply use hoses. Hey, maybe as part of her rehabilitation, Lindsay Lohan could be on charge of the cow fart extraction. Let the punishment fit the crime.

And Mr. Assad, if you’re reading my blog, which is very likely given my mass appeal and world wide distribution, I hope you wake up and listen to your people. It’s a brave new world, and we’re watching.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/17/11

Photo by Shauna Leigh Taylor-Oppenheimer

The Canadian Thanksgiving has passed and the weekend before last people were pulling in docks and shuttering up their cottages for the winter. We are once again all alone up here on a deserted lake. Time to find indoor distractions. Shauna bought me a Kindle electronic book for my birthday and last week I read my first book on it (Sarah’s Key). I like the portability, and I grudgingly admit I appreciate something representing new technology. I was always tough on books, and this device is easy to carry around. Save the trees, for last.

A week ago last Tuesday it was election day in Ontario, and Norman Bates (Dalton McGinty) was once again elected Premier of Ontario. Shauna voted at the Katrine Community Centre. Keep in mind, Katrine has a population of about 80 people … no recounts or election fraud up here in the Great White North.

I watched a story on the evening news the other night indicating that the ancient “sport” of cricket fighting in China is dwindling in popularity. It would never occur to me in a thousand years to entertain myself, much less gamble, on a couple of crickets fighting, but apparently that is a legitimate and ancient pass time in China. I wonder if those crickets juice. Some of them looked awfully pumped up.

With stock values of Research in Motion down 65% from their all time high, the once ubiquitous Blackberry has fallen on hard times. Last week, to add insult to injury, the Blackberry communications system went down for days, and Blackberry users were unable to communicate their vital information (How R U ??? … LOL!). Heaven forbid they should pick up a land line or send an email through their computer. Always there to pick up the slack, Apple just introduced its latest IPhone (4S?) and people were lined up around the block to purchase them.

Republican hopeful and pizza mogul Herman “9-9-9” Cain ruffled some feathers last week in response to the recent and much-publicized Occupy Wall Street protest. A lot of people got together in NYC and other major metropolitan centers to protest the unbridled greed and injustice they attribute to the machinations of Wall Street. With so many people out of work, it is not surprising that people blame Wall Street for the latest financial mess. Where‘s the bailout for the poor, eat the rich, blah, blah, blah. Cain’s response to this: Quit your whining; blame yourselves and the government you elected for their failed policies, not Wall Street. He’s got the solution: simplify the tax code. Spoken like a true businessman, but wait until the gloves come off and the real campaigning begins. When it gets ugly he’ll likely take his ball and go home, just like Ross Perot did when his feelings were hurt. While I can’t comment on this intelligently (I hardly ever do!), I admire Cain’s spunk. Clearly he is not in this to make friends, and yet he’s doing surprisingly well in early polls. At the moment his biggest competition for the Republican nod is the unspectacular Mitt Romney. I understand the indignation of the protesters, but I think Capital Hill is where they should be protesting. Somebody left the lid off the cookie jar, and it wasn’t Wall Street.

And Jack Kervorkian must be laughing from his grave over the article I found in News of the Weird (http://www.newsoftheweird.com) the other day. It was about some Lithuanian guy who has designed an “elegant” way to kill oneself: death by roller coaster. The ride induces cerebral hypoxia by generating G forces that will shut down the brain while allegedly leaving the rider in a state of euphoria. Please define euphoria for me, because I’m not sure I want to check out, traveling at 220 mph, screaming “NOOOOO!,” my cheeks and eyelids flapping uncontrollably in the wind, as I freefall 1600 feet to my certain death. Not exactly doves and harp music for me, but arguably a step above expiring in a nursing home. One has the option to change one’s mind during the first two minutes of the ride, but something tells me that I might not be in control of my motor functions at that point. Speaking of which, I want to know who hoses out the urine and excrement before the next lucky passenger takes the plunge. Also, does the ride come with calliope music? According to the article, suicide is legal in Washington and Oregon as well as in four European countries. I did not know that.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/10/11

Yikes, I turned 56 on Saturday. To those of you who called or wrote, thank you, even if your Facebook account reminded you to do so. This year my birthday fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and the day we fast from sundown to sundown. Having lost Mom, and Dad two years ago, I did a lot of reflecting about my charmed life so far, reminding myself that the time is long overdue to give back. I had a wonderful day doing nothing but potting around in the yard and at the end of the day, sitting on my boat, drifting out in the middle of our lake, reading the newspaper while Shauna read her book. I actually forgot how old I am and mistakenly assumed I was approaching 55. They tell me the brain goes as you get older. My how time flies when you’re a self-absorbed putz. And speaking of which …

I had a sober thought the other day - I have those every so often - when I heard about the passing of Apple genius Steve Jobs last week. He was also born in 1955, and now he’s gone. I am reminded of what that guy accomplished in his all too short life, so mortality, and the legacy we leave behind are the topics du jour. I have a tendency to compare myself unfavorably to my contemporaries, and this of course begs the question, what is success? I seem pre-occupied with this subject of late, because, having recently lost both my parents, and as I find myself reluctantly catapulted into “the next stage of my life,” I wonder what it is I will leave behind. Will it be one of my songs, which becomes the multi-generational anthem for the disenfranchised? Will I choke on my electric toothbrush, and thus become famous as the most bizarre and ridiculous example of how a person ever died. I’d like it to be something more noteworthy. Famous Buffalonian, Wilson Greatbatch, left behind the cardiac pacemaker as his legacy, and his invention has saved, and continues to save, millions of lives annually. Superstar Michael Jackson was scandal-plagued, and his death was bordering on tragic, but no one can deny that he was one hugely talented entertainer. Ted Kaczinski will probably be remembered throughout history as the murderous Unibomber, but someone can’t be a success if they simply achieve notoriety, can they? I suppose one could argue that he achieved the goal of being remembered, but I don‘t think Ted was focused on celebrity.

As I grow older, I intoxicate myself with the dream that I will be remembered for some notable, positive achievement, but as time marches on, that aspiration becomes eroded by my mediocrity. As the Tragically Hip so eloquently put it in the wonderful song Ahead by a Century, “with delusions of someday, casting a golden light/ No dress rehearsal, this is our life” I suppose the notion with which I can now comfort myself is that everyone is a success who has friends or who leaves the world a better place than when they arrived. Maybe this is simply a rationale for my relative failure, compared to Steve Jobs, but it works for me. Relatively speaking we’re all just specks on the head of a pin anyhow, right? This morning, as I sat down to write this week’s babblings, I read an email link that someone had sent me. It was Steve Jobs speech to the 2005 graduates of Stamford University, and it was inspiring. One line in the speech stuck with me: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” I don’t know what kind of a person Jobs really was, but his attitude and his focus were remarkable.

When I saw Neil Young play Massey Hall a few months ago, the first performer was Bert Jansch, who was I believe one of the founding members of a group I used to listen to called Pentagle. When I saw him play, it brought back fond memories of my college years. Jansch died in London last week of lung cancer, and I suppose the performance I saw was one of his very last. He was very good, and well received, given the legend for whom he was opening. I thought about that performance today, as I woke up to finish this week’s report. Music is a gift, and thank you Mr. Jansch for your performance(s). As the autumn leaves paint a Van Gogh painting on the shores across the lake, and as one generation passes the gauntlet to the next, I am for the moment at peace with myself and the world around me. This is a rare feeling, and I pray for the sustainment of this moment.


Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/5/11

Sorry to be late posting this; I was down in Buffalo to sell Mom’s car and take care of some other estate business. Monday night, after a long day, I treated myself and played an open mic at a local Buffalo bar. I haven’t played in a while, and it felt good to perform in public again. The other day I was listening to a compilation CD put out for the 2010 Buffalo Music is Art Festival, and besides the fact that I like most of the cuts, by artist I’ve never heard of, what occurred to me is how many gifted people hail from my home town. When I play open mics in Buffalo, there is often some voice from my concert attending past that reminds me of this talent. Not too long ago I played The Sportsman’s in Buffalo, shortly before Grethen Schultz performed. She’s a Buffalo singer to whom I’ve been listening since the late 80’s. She’s got a good rock voice, and after she did a few Bowie tunes, I requested that she do one of her original tunes, “Cool Me Down.” She seemed taken aback that someone wanted to hear that song. What I did not know is that her partner Dave Morgano, who was playing with her at the time, wrote the tune. Every time I get the notion that I may have written a good song, I am presented with some Buffalo artist that puts me in my place.

One of my favorite musicians, Leo Kottke, covered a tune called “Louise” and I always loved that song. I Googled it the other day and don’t ask me why, but I mistakenly came to the conclusion that Willy DeVille of the Mink DeVilles wrote the tune. The good news about this misinformation is that I learned a little bit about Deville, who had what I thought was an interesting story. In fact “Louise” was written by a Buffalonian songwriter named Paul Siebel. I wouldn’t have known this except that I saw Leo play it in Toronto not too long ago, and he mentioned the guy’s name. He said Seibel hates getting up to perform his songs. Boy, do I know that feeling, and as much as artists tell me it’s a rush to play in front of a receptive audience, I’d be happy to acknowledge that success in the form of a royalty check, or kind words by a music critic. I think the fundamental issue here is that I blow as a performer. But perhaps I’m getting better.

My latest self-indulgence was the purchase of a Zoom H4N 4-track field recorder, which enables me to capture fairly accurate recordings of my and other artist’s performances at these open stages. I’m still learning to use it - it is a remarkable, reasonably priced recording device - and recently I brought it down to my favorite Toronto open mic to record what I heard. Of course, I inadvertently pushed the “pause” button when it came time for my performance, but perhaps that was meant to be, because I absolutely murdered a Neil Young Cover. One guy who played a Pearl Jam cover implored me to give him a copy of his performance. As you all may know, I shun technology like the Unibomber, but in keeping with my newfound philosophy to keep learning, I took the recording home, learned to use my Roxio software in order to compress the digital .WAV file into an MP3 format (less memory … easier to email) and emailed the file to the guy. Impressed? Didn’t think so! Of course, this is digital technology that the average teenager probably considers second nature, but for a 55 year-old man with severely atrophied learning skills, this accomplishment was huge for me. I believe that it is extremely helpful to hear oneself perform; humiliating sometimes, but constructive nonetheless. Many of the talented artists whose paths I have crossed have no recordings of their music, either because they are very poor or they simply don’t care about recognition. You’d be surprised how many creative people care nothing about fame; they’re too busy being prolific and self-destructive. I once recorded I guy I used to follow in Buffalo by the name of Jeff Goldstein, and I thought he was a very gifted songwriter. Unfortunately Jeff had a lot of problems, and I’m not sure he even performs anymore, but we laid down four demo tracks which I still have. I value those recordings as much as if they were made of a famous artist. I’d hoped he would use them to demonstrate to some club owner or music industry suit that he had what it takes. But like the Joplins and Jimis and Jacksons, talent is sometimes a by-product of dysfunction. Maybe there’s hope for me yet!

Believe me, I know I’m full of myself, and I also know that my musical aspirations are of little interest to most of my readers. Nevertheless I have come to learn something about myself. I am an archivist by nature, and one of my passions is giving a voice to the unheard. So far, I’ve recorded about six open mics and already have some decent material. What will I do with it all? Perhaps nothing, but maybe a distilled version will be available to the general public one day. One of my favorite albums is a field recording my cousin made at a music festival in Kerrville, Texas. Those recordings were made around the campfire, and every song was a magical performance by a noted songwriter. You can spend piles of money to attend a big name act at an arena concert and never capture the magic of these spontaneous live performances.

I promise, no music next week.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/26/11

The leaves are turning up here in the Great White North, and on our lake folks are beginning to take in their docks for the winter. Yesterday Shauna and her parents joined me for a Fall foliage boat ride, and it was a spectacular day. I figured there may not be many more like it before the harsh winds of Fall start to blow. It’s always a bit of a challenge to get my father-in-law off the dock and into the boat, but once he was in and we were under way, he loved the ride. We cruised the length of the of three lakes (over 10 miles in all), stopping occasionally to take in a particularly colorful maple or a blue heron perched on a dock. I talk a lot about living in the moment, unencumbered by the past or the future, and in truth this has been a struggle for me. Days like yesterday remind me why living in the moment is a worthwhile endeavor.

The Toronto International Film Festival ended last week, the poodles of Hollywood have all jetted back to their charmed if dysfunctional lives, and it is once again safe for Torontonians to reclaim their city. Headed back up north from Buffalo, I was around for the very beginning of the festival, and took a walk through Yorkville to find my pals George Clooney and Brad Pitt. They were nowhere to be found, but I did see a lot of frothing fans swarming about. While I admit that I am somewhat intrigued by the glamour of celebrity, my favorite part about walking through Yorkville is to see all the hot Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and modified sport bikes.

If the horrid state of the global economy, the growing tension in the Middle East, most recently evident in Palestine’s U.N. bid for statehood, the fears of catastrophic weather, and the ever present threat that Jersey Shore halfwit Snooki might become a Pulitzner Prize winning author aren’t enough to rattle your composure, here’s something new to fret over: falling space debris. Last Friday a NASA UARS (Upper Atmosphere Space Satellite) was predicted to fall to Earth, and no one was sure where the debris would land. The biggest chunk was predicted to be about 300 pounds, but I’m guessing that any space projectile which makes landfall would likely leave a nasty bruise. According to the news, the chances of any human being struck by the falling debris were 1:3200. Luckily, this one landed harmlessly in the Pacific, somewhere off the west coast of North America. Apparently, there are about 20,000 pieces of man made space junk floating around up there right now, little detrimental bi-products of our space age technology. It’s not bad enough that we’ve trashed Mother Earth, must we litter outer space as well? I guess the writers of my favorite TV program Northern Exposure were ahead of their time when they created the character of Maggie, whose husband was killed when a falling satellite landed on him.

You’ve heard much talk about the of the Baby Boom generation, and of course the Generation X-ers; now, according to an article I just read in the NY Times, we usher in the Generation Limbos: 20-somethings who, having recently entered the anemic North American job market, find their prospects slim to none. In the article there were comparisons to the Japanese youth idled after the crippling recession that hit Japan back in the 1990s. It’s not a very cheery view of the prospects for the next generation, and perhaps it’s a wake-up call to all the greedy sons of bitches who caused the most recent economic disaster. Most of them have children, right, or did they eat them already? The article suggests that, absent the prospect of any kind of meaningful career to boost their sense of self worth, today’s college graduates are increasingly inclined to become reclusive, disenchanted, and apathetic. Of course there is even less hope for the under-educated. What concerns me most about this trend is that, if history repeats itself, prolonged economic downturns like this cultivate fanaticism and bad judgment. Take a look at pre-WWII Germany. As America braces for the very real prospect of another round of the dreaded “R” word, my hope is that a leader will emerge, either in Europe or the United States, who reminds us that it takes balls to make the tough decisions. Perhaps we the clueless electorate need to be a little clearer on that as well.

An early Shana Tova to all fellow members of the tribe; here's hoping it is a good new year. As for living in the moment, I’m having more luck letting go of the past than I am not worrying about the future. For the moment, the colors are spectacular.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 9/18/11

Today I resurrect one of my all too familiar rants. The time has come, and though I have resisted this decision for almost six years now, I am officially in the market for a new cell phone. For the past six years I have managed quite well with my very basic Sanyo Katana flip phone, but I am tough on my equipment, and no electronic device that I use daily lasts very long. I’ve probably dropped my cell phone a hundred times over the years, usually onto some hard surface. I once left it out in the pouring rain for three days straight, and it still works. The other day, the ringer failed to work, the keypad is a bit dodgy, and in other ways it’s becoming less than reliable. Primitive though it is by today‘s standards, it has proven to be durable and reliable, and I’d love to simply repair it and keep it for another six years. Unfortunately, these days technology renders perfectly good electronic devices obsolete within a few months, and pretty soon I fear this phone will not communicate properly on the ever-faster-new-and-improved-smart-texting-high-definition-mega-data-microwave networks. Let’s not even go into the fact that I cannot download “Angry Birds” or the thousands of other dubiously useful “apps” (applications) essential to technoweenies.

For the record, I despise cell phones (and most other “labor-saving” technology), and I truly believe that they are canaries in the coal mine, facilitating the death of meaningful communication. That said, like computers, this technology has insinuated itself into my daily life and I have become somewhat dependant on it. Anticipating this, and because I am allowed a new phone for free every three years, several months ago I went to Bell Mobility and reluctantly picked out a replacement which seemed the most similar to my basic Sanyo. It was anything but, and within 24 hours I returned it and re-activated my old phone. For me, internet access, advanced camera features, texting, gaming, and the ability to store my entire record and digital photo collection on a cell phone are of little use. I have a laptop that handles most of these tasks, and I don’t need to read the Huffington Post on a two inch screen. I simply want a cell phone to be able to make and receive calls with clear reception. Period. Bonus points if it’s made out of high impact rubber.

My wife and I were discussing recent advances in technology, and we came to the conclusion that for those of us approaching codgerdom, there is a break even point after which technology becomes frustrating and bothersome. I sat in line the other day behind an older woman at Wal-Mart who was having trouble using her debit card to pay for her goods. She couldn’t figure out how the new chip worked. I watched an ad on television the other day touting the benefits of some retirement facility. It featured a group of seniors standing around enjoying a game of Wii bowling (interactive video game). Clearly this was directed at the son or daughter who might actually know what Wii is, and who was contemplating a guilt free alternative to having their parents euthanized. I have a TomTom GPS in my car that I’m ready to throw out the window. The thing is possessed and occasionally decides on its own where it will direct me to drive. I found myself on the busy QEW highway the other day screaming “Shut Up!” to it at the top of my lungs, and the volume switch, which is touch screen technology, is almost impossible to adjust while driving. By the way, what is wrong with consulting a map; it’s no more distracting than fiddling around with a touch screen at 65 MPH? Anyhow, in my unsolicited opinion, phone companies have missed a huge marketing opportunity by denying us fifty and sixty-somethings our codger-friendly phones. And while you’re at it, invent a remote control that doesn’t require an engineer to operate! Herein ends the grumpy boomer rant.

Final notes. I watched the Republican debate in the States the other night. I think Ron Paul is just on the roster so someone will listen to him for 30 seconds. Michele Bachmann put her foot in it shortly after the debate suggesting that an injection to prevent HPV could cause mental retardation. Didn’t anybody brief her on the “no-no words” in political discourse? And so many of them spew out false statistics and information with the misguided confidence that no one will notice. In truth most of us don’t, but in this golden age of communication we have fact finders everywhere who remind us of what constitutes a lie, a damn lie, and/or a statistic. I watch these debates to cull the herd, but I’m probably better off throwing darts at a board. I have yet to see a true leader emerge, and who would want that job anyhow? Everybody thought Obama was the man, but now many of his supporters are turning on him (including the Democratic party). He did kill bin Bombin’. I guess that was his Cuban Missile Crisis. He was simply a better talker than the previous communications-challenged Commander-in-Chief. Now he has “Greengate” to contend with. Oops, we just threw away $535 Million of the taxpayer’s money on a failed solar energy company (Solyndra). Hey, at least it wasn’t a cell phone company. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/12/11

Yesterday was the 10^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in NYC and Washington D.C. I remember watching the morning news shortly after the first jet hit the twin towers and thinking it was just a tragic accident. Then, it became clear that we were under attack when the second tower was hit. Sitting in our apartment on the 45^th floor, I felt the same irrational fear and anxiousness many others probably felt. How big WAS this attack going to be? Shortly after that horrible event, a friend forwarded to me an article which seemed to capture all of the anger and outrage that a lot of North Americans probably felt. I printed it verbatim because I could not have expressed my rage more eloquently. To follow is that article, credited to Leonard Pitts Jr. and out of the Miami Herald. I hope you will take a few moments now to read it:

"We'll go forward from this moment.
It's my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide
words that help make sense of that which troubles the American
soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting
disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only
words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown
author of this suffering.

You monster.
You beast.
You unspeakable bastard.
What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack
on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you
hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you
failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your
cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our
resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us
together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome
family; a family rent by racial, social, political, and class
division, but a family nonetheless. We are frivolous, yes,
capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop
culture minutiae a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's
misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by
the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and
maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain
sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent
though, peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know
the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming
majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and
loving God.

Some people  perhaps think that all of this makes us
weak.

.../2


You are mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in
ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.            
IN PAIN. Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in
shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful
thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that
this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster,
isn't the plot from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the
awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death
toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of
terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably
the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never
been bloodied before,

But there is a gulf of difference between making us bloody and
making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its
bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us hard, the last time
anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When
aroused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our
force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear
any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit
of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my
people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It
also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.
In the days to come, there will be recrimination and
accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure
allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from
happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided
talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this
moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too.
Unimaginably determined.


THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not readily apparent. That aspect
of our character is seldom understood by the people who don't
know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on
hold.

As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as
Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs
to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your
hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And
take this message in exchange:

You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable
of. You don't know what you just started.
But you're about to learn." 

- Leonard Pitts Jr.

Ten years later, we just took out bin Laden, and there are probably a hundred more like him with his despicable intentions. I doubt this silent war will ever truly be over. At present, the “Arab Spring” is sweeping across the Middle East, but how will this affect the people of North America? As I leave you on this fateful anniversary, I wonder if this silent war in which we now find ourselves embroiled is simply a battle of good vs. evil or of two equally flawed ideologies. To quote Nietzche: “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.” Amen to that.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/5/11

Yowza! It's Labor Day already?! Perhaps because of all the health care issues, and because I spent a lot of time running back and forth to Buffalo, this summer just flew by. Time in general has taken a quantum leap of late, and I am reminded if this unsettling fact when I hear of milestones passing, such as the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It makes me pause and wonder what the heck I’ve been doing with my time. That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept up writing the Oppenheimer Report for almost 20 years. It’s not simply for the edification of my 12 loyal readers, but also to jog my ever-eroding memory. Remember when the very disturbed Andrew Cunanan shot Versace to death in South Miami Beach back in 1997? This report, admittedly opinionated and laced with misinformation, is my opaque window into the past. I think keeping a journal, even bi-weekly or monthly, is a great way to create one’s own personal history book. Do you remember what you were doing back in 1992?

Once Hurricane Irene had passed and the skies had cleared, most of us who were not affected did not pay much attention to the aftermath. As with all natural disasters, I tend to lose interest if it doesn’t immediately affect me. In New York State alone the damage was formidable. I never stopped to consider the ramifications, but flash floods are as bad as tornadoes in terms of destruction. After a flood, farmers can’t feed their livestock, fertile topsoil has been washed away, supplies can’t get in because the roads are gone, long term power outages wreak havoc on already compromised communities. In short, the long term effects are devastating. What can you do when your home has been filled with raw sewage? Fun facts (gleaned from the CNN website): storm cleanup in NYS alone is estimated at $1Billion and agricultural losses are in the area of $45 Million. 600 homes were destroyed, 22 state bridges were closed, 150 major state highways were damaged, 145,000 acres of farmland were affected, 9 people died, and 6 towns were wiped out. New York can’t catch a break. Just when I thought Andrew Cuomo was going to  be the great white hope, he’s now saddled with a costly natural disaster. Patterson, N.J. was so bad that Obama chose it for his photo opportunity. My sister and brother-in-law, who live in New Canaan, Ct. near the Long Island Sound, headed for the hills before Irene struck. I still have not heard if their property was damaged. And speaking of can’t catch a break, tropical storm Lee just hammered the Gulf coast, making a direct hit on New Orleans. I heard on the news that this slow moving rainmaker dropped over 10 inches of rain on the Big Easy, and as much as 15-20 inches elsewhere along the coast. And Hurricane Katia is on deck. Happy Labor Day! So much for the desperately needed infusion of tourist dollars into the Gulf Coast.

In the “what else” department, teen heart throb Justin Bieber had a fender bender in his new Ferrari. How old is that kid? My first car was a used VW Beetle. The much-coveted Stanley Cup was dented when it fell off a table in Newfoundland. Is this a bad omen for the NHL? Fire that handler with the white gloves; isn’t it his job to protect The Cup? Looking for a place to park your investment dollars in these uncertain times? How about North Korea? I read that Kim Jung Il, the ever-charming, oddly coifed fearless leader of this little understood communist country, is looking for foreign investors to pour money into the Mount Kumgang resort in the Southeast part of his country. South Koreans had been the biggest investors (approximately $443 Million) until one of their countrymen was shot dead in 2008 after wandering into a nearby military zone (Mount Kumgang is very near the DMZ). Not a great draw for tourists. Now, as S. Korean investors try to pull their money out of the mothballed project, N.Korea is saying “you snooze you lose.” What more could you ask for in a resort investment … beautiful surroundings, good food, the omnipresent threat of spontaneous murder or incarceration at the hands of a ruthless despot? Where do I sign up? What those North Koreans need is Donald Trump as a consultant. The Humpster would have them in the black in no time. And I think he and Il have the same barber.

My heartfelt sympathy for all the victims of Irene. I suppose that by comparison to some of the other recent natural disasters in the world, including the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, it could have been worse, but that’s easy for me to say, safe and dry in my Northern Ontario home.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/29/11

I woke up last Saturday morning, eagerly awaiting footage of the ravages of Hurricane Irene, which was crawling up the Eastern Seaboard, only to find that it had made landfall on the North Caroline coast as a Category One. After listening to Chad Meyers on CNN frothing at the bit and crying “The sky is falling,” and then listening to Mayor Bloomberg’s press conferences in NYC, I was expecting the worse. Spoke to my nephew the weather guy, who works in Virginia, and he was not all that impressed by the hype Irene was getting. Certainly she was a big storm, I believe something like 800 miles wide, but as my nephew pointed out, sometimes the big, slow moving ones aren’t the most dangerous. The infamous Hurricane Andrew, which so devastated southern Florida in 1992, was smaller in size but much more powerful in force. Of course all hurricanes are dangerous and destructive, and certainly this storm was no exception. Excessive rain was a major factor, and who knew Vermont would get hammered with flash floods? I figured most of the flooding would be coastal but it seems that flash flooding inland was a big problem as well. Here’s a fun fact: with all the precipitation from Irene, 23 inches of rain have now fallen in Philadelphia in the past month. I like NJ Governor Chris Christie: “Get the hell off the shore!” Seems like a no nonsense guy, and apparently he’s getting NJ back on financial track. Maybe he should run for president. As I finish this report on Monday night, I just heard on the news that around 5 Million people are without power. Prattsville, NY looked like it was completely underwater.

Whenever there’s a hurricane, I am always astounded by the locals who chose to ride it out. The people in Key West are notorious for their stubborn refusal to evacuate. If ever there comes a serious storm surge, those people will be toast. There were reports that some Philadelphia streets were flooded up to the to tops of street signs. One remark about casualties. I do not discount the severity of this storm, and as of this evening, the death toll from Irene is up to 25. I was reading the NY Times the other day, and buried on the back page was a story about a recent mosque bombing, I think in Iraq, and about the same number of people were killed. And that happens a lot over there.

What else … Visionary Apple CEO Steve Jobs stepped down last week, citing health issues, and Tim Cook will take over the reins. Japan is spitting out Prime Ministers like watermelon seeds. Former Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda is the new guy in town and I think he’s number five or six in as many years. Before Irene trumped it, the big story was the “liberation” of Libya. As another oppressive dictator is chased out, one wonders what the new leaders will be like. I doubt they could be much worse. Gaddafi has fled to Algeria, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he receives a lethal dose of lead poisoning someday soon. By the way how DO you spell his name; I've seen it spelled 4 different ways? Notorious polygamist and convicted sex offender, Warren “The Prophet” Jeffs is in a coma, on injured reserve in a Texas hospital. That’s what he gets for going on a hunger strike. Megrahi, that much-despised Lockerbie bomber is in a coma. Good riddance to him. Syrian despot Assad is killing his countrymen at an alarming rate (about 2200 so far) as the world looks on, and I’m guessing he’s heading for the same hotel in Algeria where Gaddafi’s staying. Canadian NDP party leader Jack Layton died, rather suddenly, last week. After three decades of public service, Layton played an important role recently in thwarting the attempted Liberal coup of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Apparently he was a standup guy and well respected by many Canadians.

Today was the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Goodnight Irene.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED