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