The Oppenheimer Report 11/26/12

　

I hope all of my friends south of the border enjoyed their Thanksgiving celebrations last Thursday. Early last week I awoke to a strange sound outside, and when I looked out the window, I saw 16 wild turkeys walking around on our lawn. The photograph from last week’s report caught a small group of them. Sometimes I’ll see the odd one or two running across the road, but never so many in one place. Maybe it was a message from my mom and dad. I really miss them when the American Thanksgiving rolls around. So many golden memories! Nothing stays the same, but after so many great celebrations in Buffalo, that holiday has taught me some important lessons. For one thing, giant hot air-filled balloons parading down the street never get old. The important lesson I have learned is to be thankful, and I make an effort to show some genuine form of thanks every day. Thank you Shauna, for being such a loving and tireless soul mate. Thank you to friends and family, who enrich my life by making it so much more interesting than it otherwise would be. And of course, thank you mom and dad, for teaching me humor and love, and for providing me with the tools to cope with life’s challenges.

Did you happen to hear that there is a new documentary coming out on the Investigation Discovery channel, suggesting that a serial killer named Glen Rogers and not O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman back in 1994? Rogers, who is on death row in for killing five other women, has confessed to the bloody crimes. He claims O.J. hired him to steal some jewelry from Nicole and that Simpson was nearby when the murders took place. This would explain why there is physical evidence of Simpson’s presence on the crime scene. Rogers and his brother Carl, who is the focus of the documentary, may have an ulterior motive here: if the case is re-opened, Glen could get a temporary stay of execution in order to re-open the California murder investigation. Hard to believe a guy named Mr. Rogers is a serial killer.

In my distracted, attention deficit disorder-driven ritual of channel surfing the other night, I turned to CNN long enough to hear the ever insightful Dr. Phil offering his advice on child discipline. I’m not exactly sure why, but I simply can’t stand Dr. Phil. He might be an effective therapist, but his whiny, plaintive southern drawl, and his omnipresence on television just rubs me the wrong way. I had to laugh when I heard his following pearls of wisdom (and I paraphrase): “How many times do you have to tell your child not to set the cat on fire before he or she stops doing it; you have to be consistent in your discipline, every time this happens.” My immediate reaction to this sage advice was, if your child sets the cat on fire more than once, either that cat is made of asbestos or that is otherwise one tough kitty.Nine lives my ass.  I know I did some pretty weird stuff when I was a kid, I even remember a few bouts of pyromania, but I don’t recall ever setting the family pet on fire. As for parenting skills, my parents would not have let that happen more than once. In our household at least, pets were much higher up on the food chain than children, and any attempt to harm an animal would likely have resulted in my castration.

The starting gun has officially fired ushering in a month of retail madness, so whip out that plastic and buy. On one of those “making a difference” segments on the news the other night I watched a story about some teacher of preschoolers, who tried an experiment. He took away all the toys in his kindergarten class and replaced them with cardboard boxes. His idea was to inspire the children to use their imaginations and to create a plaything out of the boxes. Kids came up with fortresses, and pirate ships, and all sorts of creative things, and surprisingly didn’t seem to miss their conventional toys. At a time when most people are struggling financially, perhaps this is an important lesson to impart.

Final notes. Actor Larry Hagman, A/K/A JR Ewing died last week. He was 81. I remember him from I Dream of Jeannie. That Jeannie was hot. Yesterday marked the 100^th Anniversary the Grey Cup, Canada’s answer to the Superbowl. Toronto hosted the event this year and the Toronto Argonauts prevailed over the Calgary Stampeders 35-22. I’m sure there are some hung over Toronto fans this morning, because last night the city went nuts. With no Leafs to watch, and no other major league winners, of course the fans are going to seize this opportunity to celebrate. Any port in a storm.

Sweetie, how many times have I told you not to light Mr. Jingles on fire; if you continue this bad behavior I will have no choice but to take away your cell phone for a week. Now tell Mr. Jingles you’re sorry and paste this fake fur back on him.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/19/12

Wild turkeys in front of our house

After a miserable October and a lousy start to November, last Sunday up here in the Great White North was just spectacular. I put up our glass storm windows on the front porch, planted a few more trees and generally spent as much time outside as I could. The retractable dock is up - I love that thing, because I can be the last guy on the lake to take up my dock and I don’t need to get wet doing it - the hoses are drained, coiled, and put inside, and all the outside water lines have been shut off. By last Monday, conditions had once again deteriorated, and I predict that the ground will soon be frozen. I don’t mind winter so much, and in fact I enjoy the odd snowstorm; it’s the transitional phase from fall to winter that I do not like. My body has not yet adjusted to the cold, damp, rainy weather, and now in my late 50s, the bones are beginning to creak and moan a bit. That said, every time I complain about the weather, I remind myself of the present condition of the Jersey shore. There but for the grace of Mother Nature go I.

The other night, we had another wildlife adventure in the house. We were eating dinner in front of the television and heard Jasper’s uncharacteristically muted growl. Usually, if she’s in the house and sees an animal outside, she transforms into her alter ego, the convulsive, unstoppably noisy hound from hell, barking, frothing, and lunging at the window. She hates all rodents, dislikes most other critters as well, and only really tolerates us. The last time I heard her make that muted sound was when there was a flying squirrel in the house, perched on one of our higher curtain rods. Sure enough, Jasper was warning us that there was another flying squirrel in our house, clinging to the wall near the ceiling of one of the turrets. Believe it or not, those particular squirrels are protected and I am not supposed to kill them. Once they enter my house, all bets are off. Shauna brought me the pellet gun, but I wasn’t too keen on firing even that pop gun inside the house. I ended up catching it in a butterfly net and flinging it out in the yard. It took three tries to catch it, and I probably should have 86ed the little bastard, but I gave it a second chance. Any more home invasions and we’re adopting a scorched earth policy.

The Gaza Strip is back in the news, after an Israeli drone attack took out a top Hamas leader. Of course Hamas fired a barrage of rockets back at Israel, and that has been ongoing since before the drone attack. Much is made of the Israeli attacks on the innocent Palestinians, and if last week’s media coverage was any indication, the spin seems to favor the Palestinians. Certainly Hamas is trying to rally the Arab world to support their crusade for a Palestinian state (and the annihilation of Israel). Meanwhile, Syrian despot Assad and his thugs have exterminated 30,000 or more of their own countrymen as the world stands on the sidelines. I wonder now how Egypt will react to this latest escalation, now that her leadership is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Will they jeopardize billions in U.S. aid to support Palestine? I would not want to be someone charged with keeping the peace in the Middle East. When asked about the seemingly hopeless nature of this conflict, one expert on international affairs brought up the fact that no one thought the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland would ever end, and essentially it has. While I understand the point he was making, peace in the Middle East seems unobtainable to me.

Last week, I mentioned the latest dive into the deep end of junk food lust as Pizza Hut announced its new hotdog-filled pizza. In the yin and the yang of America’s love affair with junk food, Hostess announced that after 82 years, it is closing down the Twinkie factory. No more Twinkies!? Forget the jobless rate, this will officially throw Americans into a deep depression. What a blow to American culture! Of course this announcement immediately led to a run on Twinkies, with five dollar boxes of the little golden logs of lard selling for eighty bucks or more on eBay. Great gift idea for the upcoming holidays. Buy your loved one that very collectible last box of Twinkies. In fifty years, you can have it appraised on Antiques Road Show; I’ll bet its value will skyrocket. To hell with Wall Street, discontinued junk food is the new gold standard. In the Hostess arsenal, Snowballs were always my favorite - those cream-filled, wobbly, gelatinous, coconut-covered blobs of pink and white which, when I was a child, vaguely reminded me of boobs.

One final story was eclipsed by coverage of the recent hurricane … I send a belated don‘t-let-the-screen-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out farewell to colorful Italian hound dog ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who, having resigned his leadership role, now faces four years in jail for tax fraud. Oops.

What would be the Italian equivalent to a Twinkie? Just wondering.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/12/12

For all the Veterans

While watching the news the other day, I saw an ad that left me incredulous. Pizza Hut is introducing their new pizza featuring hotdogs folded into the perimeter crust of the pizza. Really, do the guys at Pizza Hut just look for the crappiest food to add to their pizzas? Hmmm, what salt-infused, artery-clogging, quasi food can we stuff into our pizzas this week?! Spam? Head Cheese? Pork sausage? Deep fried chicken wings? How about Snickers bars? I thought it was ridiculous when they filled those crusts with extra mozzarella; I mean, isn’t there enough cheese on the pizza already? Now it’s hotdogs. I‘ll bet this is a big seller with Honey Boo Boo and her grey-matter-deprived family. And speaking of Sodom, on to the elections ...

Let’s call it what it was, an ass whooping. The Republicans got their collective asses whooped, and perhaps that was overdue. I’ve been complaining since the Bush years that my party was hijacked by the religious right, and I think they finally drove the pope mobile over the cliff. Perhaps this wake up call will usher them into the 21^st Century (or even the 20^th for that matter) -- you know, that era when women have the right to decide what to do with their bodies and tolerance is favored over marginalization? Hard to believe, but not all Republicans are boneheads. Not unlike the Muslim extremists who have sullied Islam, so have those bozos on the extreme right undermined the Republican Party. I think Obama’s victory in former Republican strongholds sent a message to those afore-mentioned nut balls that the rest of America is not buying their brand of tuna. In a perfect world, both parties would now move to the center and do what is best for America, averting the imminent fiscal nosedive we are warned of daily. I am doubtful. It's time to stop this horribly irresponsible behavior and LEAD, and while we’re aspiring to do the impossible, perhaps we can figure out a way to implement election reform. A billion dollars spent for nothing; what a shameful display of waste! As for the yeah-we-showed-the-Republicans comments about a decisive victory, certainly this was a shot fired over the bow, but hardly a definitive national consensus. The popular vote indicated a divided country. As for the disrespectful nonsense I read and hear from both sides, I have this to say. We are all to blame for this mess, not Republicans or Democrats … all of us. The sooner we accept this and deal with it, the sooner we start the onerous process of digging ourselves out of this fiscal mess. BTW, I am a registered Republican. There, I’ve said it. This does not make me an ignorant, filthy rich, greedy, homophobic, evangelist, or a misogynist. Shame on those who would suggest this, directly or by inference. I have friends who are respected economists, doctors, employees at the Chevy plant in Buffalo, teachers, even women, who vote Republican. We are all Americans. We have differing beliefs about the course of the ship of state, and intolerance is childish and ugly be it from the left or the right. We wonder how so many of our public servants became so foolish and divisive … they pander to their electorate. It’s called politics. Final election comment. Polling results in Florida, where one humorist suggested Cubans go to live and Jews go to die, were still outstanding days after the election. WTF Florida, good thing the election did not hinge on your vote! Next time, let’s give Floridians a two week head start, you know, kind of an election handicap.

It’s been about two weeks now since Sandy washed away parts of the East Coast, and from what I’m reading and seeing, things are still pretty grim in the hardest hit areas. Ask a Long Islander what he or she thinks of Long Island Power and Light and you will likely get an earful. To add insult to injury, a N’or Easter just walloped the same areas devastated by Sandy, dumping snow on some of the worst hit areas. Did any of you see the 60 Minutes segment last night on the Queens community of Belle Harbor? Wow, talk about a group of people with a backbone.

Finally, and speaking of courage, yesterday was Veteran’s Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day here in Canada. To the 118,000 Canadians who have lost their lives in the line of duty, and to the countless Americans who have died to protect our freedom, thank you for your sacrifice. As ridiculous as our society and our democracy sometimes seems, we share the greatest privilege in the world and I never take my freedom for granted. And to the victims of Sandy, may your lives resume some sense of normalcy soon.

　
Now who wants pizza?

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 11/6/12

ELECTION DAY ....

First of all, Happy Birthday to my best friend Bob, who turned 108 yesterday (ha ha). His birthday is about a month after mine, and to celebrate both birthdays, this year we decided to forgo the wax museums of Niagara Falls and make a pilgrimage to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Great timing, right after Sandy, but we called ahead and Cleveland was in fact still standing. Driving down from Buffalo we saw a lot of uprooted trees as we reached the Ohio border. Side roads were washed out and Shauna told me that there had been some damage to the Hall of Fame building. We arrived in Cleveland Friday night, and as we were checking in to our hotel, Bob ran into one of his wife’s colleagues from Buffalo. She asked if we had any use for one ticket to see rock band The Tragically Hip in a small venue (House of Blues). That band is one of my all time favorites; Bob’s as well. We agreed to take the ticket if we could buy one more scalped ticket. It was a cold blustery night, but we walked over to the House of Blues and made a deal with “Downtown Dan” to purchase an extra ticket for this sold out show, not knowing until the doors opened if what we had purchased would get us in. I have sold tickets to scalpers before, but had never before purchased one. There was a nervous half hour wherein we waited in line to get into the club, but Downtown Dan did not disappoint, and we were treated to one of the best rock performances I have ever seen close up. This fortuitous event, coupled with the pilgrimage to the Hall of Fame the following day made this trip one of the best I have made in a long, long time. I could have spent the whole day looking at hand-written lyric sheets.

Certainly Hurricane Sandy and the swath of destruction she cut through the East Coast has been front line news for the past week, eclipsing even the election coverage. The last damage estimates I heard were as high as $50 Billion, and as always, when a natural disaster of this magnitude hits, I was astounded by pictures of the destruction. The Jersey shore looked like a war zone and even my sister in Western Connecticut will be without power for and estimated week or two. There were so many things about this storm which were anomalous -- the fact that a stalled high pushed it west where it would do the most destruction, and the bitter cold winds and snowstorms it spawned -- but certainly the massive destruction was due to the unprecedented storm surge. This one will go down in the record books as the big one that hit the East Coast. Had this been Haiti and not the U.S., I’m quite sure the story would go away in one news cycle, but I think we will be hearing about this bitch for a long time.

Yes, today is election day, and I honestly haven’t a clue which candidate will be the best choice. I scoff at all the partisan zealots who are so sure they know. So many things about both candidates frighten me for the welfare of my country, and I have grown so mistrustful of both parties. The spin and the money have just gone off the rails, and I sympathize with all the as yet undecided voters out there. I voted absentee ballot a week or so ago, but no matter which way I voted, Obama is a shoe-in for the electoral vote in my overwhelmingly blue state. I predict a close race, and although I am told by the pundits that the majority of voters had made up their minds a long time ago, I think the incumbent got a game-winning bump from Sandy. If the election had been three weeks later, and had the typical Washington paralysis and dysfunction delayed necessary relief, perhaps things would be different. My cynicism has been amplified steadily since the voting scandal in 2000. I am appalled at the obscene campaign spending, which I feel should be capped at a small fraction of what it is, but I pray that whoever wins tonight will be able to unfreeze Washington. I really don’t care anymore who is (most likely mistakenly) perceived to be a leader, I just pray that a leader emerges from this cesspool of unproductive prevarication. Through it all, I remain blindly hopeful, because I believe in my country, and despite all its faults I am proud to be an American. I just hope that we can generate a few more Harry Trumans and a few less Harry Reids.

Colonel Tom What's wrong? What's Going On
You can't tie yourself up for a deal
He said" Hey North you're south shut you big mouth
You gotta do what you feel is real."
Ain't got no picture postcards ain't got no souvenirs
My baby she don't know me when I'm thinking about those years 

My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim 

   - From New Orleans is Sinking by The Tragically Hip

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report-10/29/12

A pre-emptive Happy Halloween to my twelve loyal readers. I wonder what this year’s most popular costume will be. Hillbilly beauty tyke Honey Boo Boo has been in the news a lot of late; if I was the ninja costume designer I once was, I’d dress up as Honey Boo Boo, after a botched liposuction job. Think of the possibilities!

Last week we began to wind down what has turned into a larger than expected landscaping project. Our guy Marty did the work, and has done wonders to make the approach to our property look much more presentable. One of the many things he did for us was to plant a lot of trees on the property. Last week he borrowed my landscape trailer and brought over about 200 evergreens and a few birches in various shapes and sizes that he’d been hired to clear from a nearby property. The larger ones I needed assistance to plant, but in the past week I probably planted 80 or 90 of the smaller ones myself. Now we have white, red, and scotch pines, several kinds of spruce (blue are my favorite), cedar, some willows, and some birches. We have also transplanted from the woods a few baby oak trees. Oaks are one of my favorites. I have only recently begun to genuinely appreciate the beauty of trees, and perhaps this is part of my stop-and-smell-the-roses transformation from the self-absorbed-constantly-rushed-stress-puppy I once was. Tree planting is very therapeutic and meaningful to both Shauna and me. On the lakeside of this house are three healthy maples - two planted by Shauna’s dad and one planted by her brother shortly before he passed in 2000. While nothing lasts forever, those trees are a reminder that Mother Nature will endure long after we are gone.

In the backyard of my childhood home in Buffalo there stands a giant Sycamore tree which I was told is one of the oldest in the city. I always thought of it as third base for our pickup softball games. In those difficult last years, when I was down visiting my parents near the ends of their lives, I remember looking out at that tree from my old bedroom window and deriving great comfort from its newly appreciated majesty. I hope the new owners can appreciate it as half as much as I learned to.

As Shauna’s parents reach the stage in their lives when they struggle to maintain their independence and dignity, once again with trepidation I watch the challenges that both parent and child must confront. I mentioned a few reports ago that for her birthday I purchased tickets for Shauna and her mom to see Barbra Streisand perform in Toronto. This might be Streisand’s last tour, making it all the more special. Both mother and daughter are huge fans, and it made me happy to give them this gift. Several days before the concert there was a heated disagreement over one of the ever-increasing issues of independence. I was worried that this might tarnish the mother daughter experience, and by extension, the memory I hoped to create. Thankfully, and a credit to both mother and daughter, they got past their differences, and last Tuesday they attended the concert together. I know they appreciated the experience. Music is one of the best and most memorable gifts. A tree was planted.

I have spent too much time disagreeing and harboring ill will towards others - family members, friends who disappoint me, complete strangers. Sometimes that ill will is a toxic byproduct of love, sometimes it’s not. I have been as guilty as most of these indiscretions, but I think I am getting better about letting the bad stuff go. Perhaps the trees I planted last week can soak up some of that poison. With “perfect Storm” Hurricane Sandy imminent, and the contentious elections a few weeks away, I take solace in trees.

Abandoned yellow Chevy, left along the side

Pink dusk paints the windows and there’s not a soul in sight

Who was the driver, on his desert drive

White lines on the highway a rhythm for my sight

A windmill in the distance is a ladder to the sky

And it’s so peaceful, on my desert drive

These monuments to nothing, but I’m looking for a sign

Looking for some answers, on my desert drive.

 

from Desert Drive (c1992)

                                                 Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 All Rights Reserved                                

The Oppenheimer Report-10/22/12

As most of my friends know, I am a huge fan of moose. I’m not talking about Moosehead beer (which BTW not too many Canadians really drink), or the Moosejaw Warriers hockey team, or Moose FM, a popular radio station up here in the GWN. No, I’m referring to the real deal, one of Nature’s uglier behemoths, and I love it when I can spot them in the wild. I have seen a few in Alberta, but up until this year, I had never before spotted one here in Ontario. About a month ago, I came upon a (moose) cow on the side of the road as I headed into town to do some grocery shopping, and I got very excited. Hey, this is the Great White North; this is what we do up here. Last Wednesday around dusk, I took my folding boat out for a frosty putt around the lake, and as I was returning to our dock, lo and behold, there was a very large bull moose sauntering along the shoreline in ankle deep water. I could not believe that after all those moose-less years in Ontario, I spot a giant, I mean giant, bull moose, walking along the shore right in front of our house! I immediately called Shauna on my cell to let her know, but by the time I had done this, the moose had turned up towards land and was headed for the woods through the gap between our neighbor’s house and ours. Shauna ran around to the back of the house and tried to get a picture of it as it plodded off into the woods, in no particular hurry, but in the dusk light all she got was a big brown blur. She even dug up our moose caller and attempted to lure it back, although I’m not sure she is fluent in moose. This might be the biggest animal I have ever seen in the wild, and I understand why they are considered a formidable  road danger. Hit one of those beasts at high speed and it’s going to be a serious collision. We know a woman up here who was severely crippled because she and her boyfriend hit a moose while driving. I’ve got those deer alert things mounted to the front bumper of my car. Apparently they emit some kind of high pitched whistle at when the car is traveling at high speeds and this is supposed to alert the animal. I think they help, because several times driving I have passed deer on the side of the road, and they seem to look up when my car passes. Knock on wood, we’ve traveled extensively in areas where moose and deer abound, and we’ve never had one run out in front of us. Perhaps we’ve just been very lucky. Brief aside: everyone remembers Captain Kangaroo, and his sidekick Mr. Greenjeans, but how many of you remember the loveable Mr. Moose, the other seminal member of that children’s show ensemble? I adored that moose.

We do not have garbage collection at Jasper Bark Lodge, because there is no municipal pickup on the road where we live and all the private services require me to leave the garbage at the top of our drive. By the time I schlep it to the top of our 500 meter driveway, in animal proof garbage bins, I figure I might as well take it all the way to the dump. Besides, going to the dump is an adventure. There are black bears there during the summer, sometimes within spitting distance of where I throw my garbage, and as well the people who operate the yard are all colorful, interesting characters. Don’t ask me how I did it, but I inadvertently dropped something valuable into our plastics recycling bin last time I was there, then realized it about an hour after I’d emptied it out at the dump. Have you ever rummaged around inside a giant plastics recycling bin before? Well, now I have. It’s a little like those play bins they have in kids play areas filled with the multicolored plastic balls. Kinda fun, but sticky. You should have seen all the odd looks I got from people dropping off their recycled goods. “Look Gord, that city fellah has finally snapped!” This is how people guage dementia up here; if they see someone in the recycling bin, rummaging through the crap, they know he or she is a few spices short of a goulash. Shauna was with me, with her cute little yellow raincoat, daintily picking out one bottle at a time, as I frantically flailed through yards and yards of the stuff.

What else. Last Sunday, Austrian skydiver and daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumped from space and plunged a record 23 miles, freefalling to Earth from a manned helium balloon. That was a pretty cool video to watch. U.S. Senator Arlen “Wild Card” Specter died last week at 82. Seen by many in the Republican Party as a turncoat, Specter began his career as a Democrat, changed parties in ‘65, and then went back to the Democrats in 2009. I’ll bet that’s something a lot of moderate Republicans are contemplating these days, that or becoming Independents. Cell phone giants Apple and Samsung settled their much-publicized phone dispute. Apple had sued Samsung for illegally copying its products, and won. The dispute may not be over, because now Samsung is threatening to call for a new trial, claiming that the foreman of the jury had undisclosed biases against Samsung.

That Mr. Moose, he cracked me up.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report -10/15/12

　

Scary Pete

At present, I am reading the second autobiography by a famous musician/songwriter. I recently finished Keith Richards’ Life, which I read on the recommendation of a fellow rock fan, and I am now almost finished reading Neil Young’s Waging a Heavy Peace. I am a slow reader, always have been, and I do not generally read as much as I have of late, but I am really enjoying these life stories. I do not usually consider autobiographies to be page turners, but the stories these guys tell interest me because 1. They involve sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, and 2. I am interested in the craft of songwriting. Richards said he wrote the famous Stones hit Satisfaction in his sleep. Young wrote his famous song Old Man about the former caretaker of the ranch he owns in Northern California. While I have always assumed Keith Richards was a drug-addled punk with the IQ of a turnip, his story proves him to be anything but (stupid I mean … he was definitely drug-addled). Along with fellow songwriter Mick Jagger, Richards penned some of my favorite rock'n' roll hits of all times, songs like Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Woman, Sympathy for the Devil, Shattered, and Brown Sugar. The Rolling Stones album Beggar’s Banquet is one of my top ten favorite albums of all times. To me, it was fascinating to read the context in which many of these songs were written. Young’s book is of course written in an entirely different voice, but I feel I know both these men a little better for having read the accounts of their personal lives. One thing is clear, the muse of rock'n'roll is ever demanding and both of these fortunate songwriters have suffered some serious challenges in their personal lives. Richards has been clean (not sure about sober) for about ten years, and as of the writing of his book, Young had just quit drinking and smoking. Apparently, he liked his weed. He wasn’t sure if the muse would revisit him clean and sober, but I don’t think he will ever quit.

There was a segment on 60 Minutes last week about a forgotten Mexican American songwriter from Detroit named Sixto Diaz Rodriquez (Rodriguez for short), who had a brief career in music back in the late 60s and early 70s. Like so many talented songwriters, he was doomed to obscurity, and for the past thirty years, had lived as a common laborer in Detroit. Unbeknownst to him, his albums caught fire across the sea, in places like South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. He was likened to Dylan, and he became a legend when rumors surfaced that he had committed suicide while performing onstage. When he was re-discovered, living in poverty in Detroit, he became an instant star again, achieving fame beyond what he had ever before known. He’s over 70 now and this sudden and long overdue recognition seems to come as a surprise to him. Famous and humble are not two words I usually put together, but this guy is the real deal. I watched him perform on Letterman not too long ago, and he really does have something special. Not knowing anything about him, Shauna and I were both impressed and thought he was one of the better musical acts to play on that show. He reminded me a bit of Leonard Cohen. The funny thing is that he had no idea of the impact his songs had had on a generation of South Africans. What a shame. Better late than never.

When I started to write songs back in the early 80s, like so many other pie-in-the-sky wannabes, I wanted to become famous. That aspiration quickly evolved into a simple desire to be heard. Not unlike many other “artists” I still want recognition, but after having wallpapered my bedroom with rejection notices from music publishers and record companies over many years, I became more realistic. I’ve been performing on the open mike circuit for over 25 years, I can safely say there is a lot of unrecognized talent out there; 95% of it performs better than I. Yes, I still seek recognition, but often that can be the death of creativity. Lucky for me, this is the age of information and I can put my songs out into cyberspace to be ignored by the masses. The trick is not to get discouraged. I suspect I will be writing songs as long as I am able.

Speaking of songwriting, I noticed on YouTube there are some pretty funny NHL lockout songs floating around. Today I listened to a few of them, and my personal favorite so far is Shut the Puck Up by Scary Pete. You can Google the song title or just go to Pete’s website (http://www.scarypete.com) if you want to see the video. It gave me a belly laugh. This disgraceful NHL display of unbridled greed and ego should be lampooned for all to see, and I hope this public relations nightmare somehow negatively impacts those shameless NHL owners and players at least half as much as it has the loyal fans and the hundreds of thousands of hard working people whose jobs rely on professional hockey. How about putting a cap on ticket prices you greedy sons of bitches! Perhaps it’s time for me to throw my as yet unwritten NHL-bashing song into the ring.

      - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/8/12

Today, I turned fifty-seven years old, and seriously, I don’t feel a day over fifty-six. The fact is, somewhere along the line, birthdays stopped meaning all that much to me, other than to re-affirm that I am thankful to be alive. Appropriately enough, today also happens to be the Canadian Thanksgiving, so to all my Canadian pals, take the day off! Birthdays used to be such a big deal. I remember when I was eight or nine, one of the popular birthday celebrations was to throw a mega party at a roller skating rink, with fifty to seventy guests attending. Those parties were especially popular, because of course the more guests one invited, the more gifts one received. I’m not sure how many yo-yos, Hoola Hoops, or GI Joe dolls (Barbie for the girls) one boy or girl needs, but with that many guests, there were bound to be a few repeat gifts. In those days, before big box toy stores, most of the mothers in Buffalo probably did their toy shopping at Clayton’s Toyland on Elmwood Ave. A lot of my favorite toys came from that store and I used to love to go to Claytons with my mom, A.K.A. The Bank of Betty. Almost without fail, I walked out of that store with something. Back in the day, I loved cap guns and it was always a good excuse to ride over to Clayton’s (conveniently located just around the corner from our house) and replenish my supply of caps. These days, “popping a cap” means something different and entirely more violent. Generally, I liked anything that was noisy and/or tactile. I remember one silly toy made by Mattel called a “Varoom”. Anybody remember the Varoom? Basically, this was a battery-powered plastic noisemaker, which attached to one’s bicycle under the seat, and vaguely resembled a motorcycle motor. This was a somewhat lame improvement on the universally annoying playing card in the spokes noisemaker. The Varoom made some kind of cheap synthesized noise which sounded more like bad radio reception than a motorcycle engine, with some kind of “accelerator” that I could control from the handlebars. I’m sure I was a big hit with the neighbors on Sunday mornings, tooling around on my bicycle with that thing blaring. These days, my toys are bigger, more expensive, and even noisier.

Last Saturday, we attended an early Canadian Thanksgiving celebration with some of Shauna’s long lost cousins. They had invited us and Shauna’s parents to a big dinner - twenty or so guests - and that was particularly meaningful to me. We weren’t sure if that would be too much traveling for Shauna or her parents, but everyone rose to the occasion and we made it there on time. As well, we were all somewhat apprehensive, because that gathering represented a lot of strangers getting together to celebrate what is traditionally a family gathering. Now that there are no more American Thanksgivings to celebrate at the Oppenheimer household, and given that this was by far my favorite holiday of the year, I was hoping this Canadian version would be a success. Rather than wallowing in the past, I felt it was time to make a new tradition, and I very much wanted this celebration to be like the dinners I remembered. As it turned out, the stars aligned, the people were all wonderful, and we all gelled like a true family. There was a lot of history there, some of it not so happy, and in some ways this represented a lot of broken families coming together to form a new unit. Family can be complicated, and I have come to realize that it changes and evolves over time. Sometimes it expands, sometimes it contracts; there are schisms, conflicts, miscommunications, illnesses, deaths, second and third marriages, new boyfriends, new girlfriends, hurt feelings, mended fences, sorrow, and great joy. One thing I’ve learned in my 57 years is that this long strange trip is infinitely richer and more rewarding with the unfolding drama and constant evolution of a strong family. At the Oppenheimer household, Thanksgiving was legendary for its goodwill and joy, and we usually took in a few strays along the way. I will always remain thankful for that gift my Mom and Dad gave me. Thanks Mom and Dad! More so than any other holiday, this one bespeaks community to me, and it annually reminds me that if we can stay connected, regardless of the dysfunction, the misunderstandings, and the drama, then we are richer for the experience. In turn, that spark goes out into the world and indirectly enriches the lives of others. It’s called love, and in my opinion, it is highly under-rated. It may be on injured reserve these days, but it still exists in plentiful supplies, sometimes in the strangest places. The trick is to be receptive, and I suppose that comes with practice. Thank goodness I am blessed to have known so much of it in my life to date.

I made the sweet potato recipe my mother had served on Thanksgiving for forty plus years, because some traditions should never change. On this, the beginning of my 58^th year, I am sincerely thankful for all the good fortune I have known. Thank you friends and family for helping me feel this way.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/1/12

Last Tuesday, on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Shauna and I walked down to the dock at dusk and recited our prayers. While I am not a religious man by any means, and far less observant than most Jews, I find this particular high holy day relevant, and we usually acknowledge the day by fasting. When I was a kid, Mom insisted I and the family attend temple services with her on the high holy days, and I never really got it. I didn’t like all that standing up and sitting down, reciting prayers that had little meaning to me, and listening to a cantor whose voice I never liked. Even though I knew generally what the services were about, I‘d rather have been almost anywhere but in temple. As religions go, I think Judaism is a pretty good one. My lack of religious conviction has nothing to do with any kind of devotion that my parents failed to instill in me, or because I am in any way ashamed to be Jewish. I am simply at odds with all the bad things done in the name of G-d, regardless of the religion, and I am particularly wary of all religious fundamentalism. That said, I stop short of declaring myself an atheist, and there I found myself reciting parts of the Kol Nidre by the lake. We stood among Mother Nature’s congregation, with the multi-colored landscape of Fall surrounding us, washed in a golden light from the setting sun, and we acknowledged those whom we’ve lost in the past year. We also reflected on our shortcomings. It’s not a bad idea to take stock of the things I’ve done wrong in the past year, and to express hope that I can be a better person in the new year. I’ve rarely seen a sunset so beautiful. Crepuscular is I believe the term, with rays of sunlight beaming through the clouds and a soft pink light across the sky.

That was a beautiful night, unlike most of the week before when it was so miserable up here I saw a chipmunk scamper by our window wearing foul weather gear. He had that whole Nor’easter thing going on; boots, hat, everything. I think this is how The Farmer’s Almanac predicts things; they just look at what the animals are wearing in the Fall. We have one final building project slated for before the snow flies and at present, the deck of our carport is torn off. Admittedly, this is not great timing, but as one quickly realizes up here in the GWN, contractors up here work on a different time clock. And if it’s moose hunting season, fuggettabbottit. Should the November rains come early this year, we will be screwed.

I think we all assume that teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa “sleeps with the fishes”, but since he disappeared without a trace 37 years ago, no one knows exactly where he went. Rumours abound as to how it happened, and last week, there was yet another tip, this one suggesting he’d been buried in the driveway of a Roseville, Michigan home. I’m pretty sure this will turn out to be yet another dead end. Perhaps he’s embedded in the end zone of Giants Stadium, or he’s long since been digested in the belly of some alligator down in the Everglades, but more than likely, his body was disposed of in some even more untraceable way. This was a high profile hit, and this is the mob we’re talking about. When those guys want to make someone disappear, they usually succeed. Why would the mob bury him anywhere he could be dug up? Without a trace means without a trace. Unless some credible mob snitch makes a death bed confession, I think this one is a bona fide cold case. Someday, perhaps Geraldo will do a 4-hour special on it: In Search of Jimmy Hoffa‘s Teeth. My theory? I think he was made into hotdogs; you never know what goes into some of those discount dogs.

Crooner Andy Williams has passed on after a battle with bladder cancer. When I was a little boy, our housekeeper/babysitter/ surrogate grandmother used to make me watch The Andy Williams Show with her. Mr. Moon River himself. Sadly, that show wasn’t the worst thing we watched; I also sat through many an episode of General Hospital, Gomer Pyle, USMC, The Lawrence Welk Show, Petticoat Junction, and countless other examples of 70s TV drek. Perhaps this explains my present day love of bad T.V.; I’ve been trained to enjoy it! Who knows what that did to my development? Thanks a lot Mary, and if you’re up there in heaven reading this (because everybody does), smoking your Pall Mall non filters, I forgive you.

After all, that’s what a good Jew does on Yom Kippur.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/24/12

The theme of this week’s report is disappointment.

I think Letterman has picked his president; he had Obama on last week and seemed very sympathetic. As well, he's made some pretty damning remarks about Romney. Don’t discount the influence of a late night talk show host. He said (or claimed to be repeating what someone else said) Mitt Romney makes George W. Bush look like Aristotle. On top of the damning “secret” video wherein Mitt apparently says some unflattering things about the poor, coupled with his general difficulty being perceived as a human being, Mitt had a bad week. His biggest enemy seems to be the far right in his own party. Hard to believe, but Mitt is middle of the road. Actually, he‘s the middle of any issue. New SNL cast member Jay Pharoah has been handed the honor of imitating President Obama, and last Saturday in the season opener, he did a funny little speech stating that his campaign strategy was simply to let Mitt self destruct. Romney may be on the ropes, and he’ll be dead in the water if those tea baggers get any traction, but the economy is still foundering and once again, it boils down to which candidate snows the American public into thinking he’s the Great Black/White Hope. Either way, I’m not hopeful that anyone can end the stalemate which is the Amercian Federal Government.

Amidst all the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel conservative bashing in the “liberal media” NY Times, last week, there was an article in the health section which captured my interest, about harvesting body parts grown inside the body. Specifically, it was about a pioneering female surgeon who is exploring procedures to regenerate intestinal tissue in infants suffering from a disease called necrotizing enterocolitis. I don’t really understand the procedure but it sounds fascinating and will perhaps lower the infant mortality rate for this often fatal disease. The idea of harvesting body tissue and body parts to save lives brings up that old moral issue, which is one of the many ways I am parting company with America’s conservative constituency. Are doctors playing G-d?  I suppose it depends on your definition. Some of those tea baggers and the ultra right fringe of the Republican party feel it is a sin to employ stem cell technology and other modern scientific procedures to treat illnesses. I disagree wholeheartedly and feel that any ways in which medical science can save lives are worth exploring. Certainly examine the ethics of the science, but where religion collides with common sense, as it so often seems to, let the public choose, or at the very least err on the side of common sense! In the case of abortion, how can it possibly be common sense to let a bunch of devoutly religious men decide what is so clearly (to me anyway) a fundamental right of any woman?

The NHL hockey lockout is in place and assures that at least all pre-season games will be cancelled, which of course brings me to disappointment #2. Another pro sports conflict over divvying up the loot? Really? I despise that arrogant little weasel Gary Bettman and the overpaid players aren‘t much better. They all look like greedy bastards to me, and we the fans suffer the most. As for the haplessToronto Maple Leafs, who cares anyhow, because you could throw all the money in the world at the Leafs and they’d still be as pathetic as they’ve proved to be for seven years. Shame on all of them! I’m actually relieved that I may not have to endure the excruciating disappointment of another season of dashed hopes, and it will give me time to explore some of Canada’s other great winter spectator sports, like curling, and extreme (read inebriated) skidooing. You’ve heard all the text message abbreviations, such as OMG, LOL, TTFN … here’s my abbreviation for the NHL: GFY.

Final note. Shauna and I saw Canadian singer/songwriter Jann Arden perform last Saturday night at Massey Hall in Toronto and she did not disappoint. I’ve wanted to see her for years, ever since I saw a documentary following her introduction to the NYC market. Her serious and sometimes melancholy songs belie her scandalous and often self deprecating sense of humor. She is really funny, and had us in stitches the whole evening. I’d go see her again in a heartbeat.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/17/12

Sandra Fluke spoke at the Democratic convention last week and of course this re-ignited the controversial issue of church and state, so germane to the issues polarizing Democrats and Republicans. You will recall that Fluke was the Georgetown University law student vilified by shock jock ultra right chowder head Rush Limbaugh because she went before Congress advocating students rights to contraception under their university plan. He called her a “feminazi,” and I believe a slut and a whore. Regardless of your stance on contraception, or in this case the right of a religious institution to impose its moral beliefs on a healthcare system, the rhetoric gets a little over the top here. Once again, moderate Republicans (like me) feel the party has been betrayed, correction, hijacked, by the extreme right. I just read some tweets by conservative political commentators, and they sound like  adult versions of high school bullying. By the way, Twitter is apparently the wild west of outrageous communication; clearly I need to begin tweeting so I can jump in to the “debate.”

Last Tuesday marked the 12^th anniversary of 9-11 and coincidentally, there was an attack by Muslim extremists on the U.S. consulate in Libya which killed four Americans. Coinciding with the Libyan attack was a violent protest at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Perhaps all this violence was sparked by the controversial anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims which has so enraged some followers of Islam and prompted anti-American protests throughout the world. I was reading the CNN report about the fool who produced that incendiary film and in the article, they mention where he lives. Hope that guy has a good life insurance policy. Lots of talk last week about Mark Owen (not his real name), the Navy SEAL who wrote No Easy Day, recounting firsthand the details of the U.S. raid that killed Bin Bombin. He claimed on 60 Minutes that he just felt America deserved to know the truth. While the guy probably did not reveal any top secret strategies, he did sign some kind of promise not to talk about the raid, and there is probably a good reason for that. I am reminded of that knob (Canadian for dickhead) Geraldo revealing American strategies on television during the Gulf War. You gotta love Geraldo. Remember that insufferably long televised expose wherein he entered Al Capone’s secret vault and discovered some empty wine bottles? He was one of the brave pioneers of reality television, paving the way for the toilet swirling vortex of bad TV to follow.

Just reunited with an old friend of a friend who shares my love of all things musical. Every so often, I get a glimpse of what an indomitable spirit looks like, and Earle is that guy. He's had two crippling car accidents (neither his fault), battled cancer, so far successfully, and he simply refuses to give up. To boot, he is an accomplished counselor, treating some of the more challenging cases in Memphis. He can barely walk, but his mind is superb and his personality and tenacity are unbeatable. We sat and talked for hours and I got an oral history of songwriters with whom I was unfamiliar. I’ve never met anyone who loves music more or has attended as many live concerts as Earle. I had a lot of laughs and a great time with him last weekend, and had the added pleasure of meeting his charming and equally interesting companion Ruthie. I learned a lot about music, and especially about songwriters I should be following. More importantly, I was reminded of what true courage and grace look like. Thanks a lot Earle for kicking my self-absorbed ass around the block a few times!

Oh yeah and Happy New Year #5773 to fellow members of the tribe. May #5774 teach me humility and compassion.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/10/12

The Democratic convention took place last week in Charlotte, N.C. and it was marginally more interesting than last week‘s episodes of Big Brother. I’m not fan of Barack Obama (or Joe Biden) but I think Bill Clinton knocked it out of the park with his endorsement speech. Does that guy know how to work a crowd or what? I predict an almost equally divided America and a very close and contentious race leading up to the November elections. Obama will campaign on the I-killed-bin-Bombin'-saved-the-auto-industry-and-brought-affordable-healthcare-to-millions-and-remember-Republicans-are-evil-rich-old-white-men ticket, while imploring us to give him another four years to restore the ailing economy. The elephants will say Obama has had four years and the economy is still a mess, and he’s a socialist pig who is probably not even an bona fide American. If the silent (bible-thumping-ultra-conservative) majority does not turn out in record numbers, and if Mitt the Twit does not win the Ohio electoral vote, I’m thinking that the incumbent will prevail, and he certainly will if the economy improves (which I doubt a Republican congress will allow to happen). Rating it solely on the two conventions, in my usual over-simplistic way, I’d say the Republicans might be voted off the island.

NASA’s latest toy, the Curiosity Mars rover, has sent back its first photographs from the Red Planet and some of them are truly amazing. My favorite is the above photo, which depicts the rover‘s view as it lumbers at a snail's pace towards its destination at the base of 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp. I’d like some close up photos of Olympus Mons, that Martian volcano which is 3 times as high as Mt. Everest. I’m sure I am violating some copyright law by reposting this photograph without permission, but I’m counting on the fact that none of the twelve people who might read this report will blow me in. These are certainly not the first close up photographs of Mars, but they are the most recent. I believe there is presently one other rover on the surface and three orbiting spacecraft. How cool is it that we have a machine driving around on the surface of Mars that is sending us back pictures and data, from a distance of over 100 Million kilometers?! How cool is it that we can litter a new planet with our discarded space debris? Lifting our leg on the cosmic fire hydrant, so to speak.

And in the our-society-is-going-to heck-in-a-hand basket department, the other day I read about a new smart phone application which enables passengers to hail a cab. So far the app has not been sanctioned by the cab police, but it’s only a matter of time. Isn’t it illegal for drivers to use cell phones; how’s this going to work? This app would take all the fun out of the serendipitous and predatory practice of cab hailing, and gives an unfair advantage to the tech savvy. One can now order concert tickets by cell phone (totally unfair!), remotely control the climate of one’s home, program PVRs to record favorite television programs, and a thousand other miraculous labor and time saving tasks. This latest app will give us even more opportunity to disconnect from our society and avoid any form of face to face communication. Not only will we be able to text our cabby, but we can likely eliminate all human contact with him or her. Pretty soon the transformation will be complete and we’ll all be slothful (and illiterate) couch potatoes too lazy to fight off that old lady for the last cab. Deeesgraceful. It reminds me of an amusing SNL skit advertising a new app for pre-occupied smart phone users to warn them of obstacles like oncoming busses and cars, thus allowing them to remain incessantly glued to the screens of their phones. Then there is the real life YouTube video of a woman inadvertently falling into a fountain in a shopping mall because she was so immersed in her cell phone communication. Indeed I felt out of place as a pedestrian at a major intersection in Toronto last week when I found myself surrounded by fifteen or twenty other pedestrians, all completely rapt in their smart phones. It was a pickpocket’s paradise! I too am reluctantly becoming one of the (i)pod people. Fascinated by the novelty of being able to send a photo to anyone’s smart phone or computer, I’m becoming a texting fool. I’m not sexting though. Or is it Weinering?

I wonder if there was or is life on Mars. In some ways that planet is similar to Earth, and there’s evidence of water in the photographs. Perhaps there was a Martian society and, like ours, they became imprisoned and ultimately exterminated by their own technology. We naturally assume that extra terrestrials would be smarter and more developed than us, but perhaps they were just a few thousand years ahead of humans in their march to extinction. I’ve got a theory based on my voluminous knowledge of the workings of the world, and I think that The Creator, be it Mother Nature, or Allah, or name-your-diety, just stands patiently on the sidelines until our civilizations begin to implode. Just as someone like Newt Gingrich is about to be elected leader of the free world, a smart phone rings. Hello, this is the future calling, time to reset ... and with that a rogue asteroid wipes the slate clean for the next evolution of boneheads.Then, like a child whose Lego skyscraper has toppled, said Creator shrugs and begins again. Nobody's perfect.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/3/12

Happy Labor Day! It was a beautiful sunny weekend up here in the Great White North and I spent as much of it on a boat as possible. Not so nice in other parts of North America though ...

As of last Monday, Tropical Storm-turned-Hurricane Isaac was heading for New Orleans in a spooky replay of Katrina, and the media was all over the story. Isaac was following a similar track and was scheduled to hit the Louisiana coast almost exactly on the 7^th anniversary of Katrina. Hard to believe that was seven years ago! The file footage of Katrina reminded us of the potential for disaster, especially when one builds a city below sea level. Some parts of Louisiana experienced as much as 20” of rain, which apparently is not all that unusual for a slow-moving storm of this magnitude. Fun fact, presented to me by the weather professional in my family: in 1935, 24 inches of rain fell in two locations in Colorado in a six hour period, more than the yearly average for the subject areas. Isaac’s fury was not in its wind velocity but in the fact that it stalled around landfall, saturating the coast with heavy rains. Places like St. John the Baptist Parish and Plaquemines Parish, outside the enormous new and improved New Orleans levee, got hammered with heavy rain and storm surges. And this is just the first storm of the season! I’m waiting for Key West to take a direct hit, because those people are crazy, and notorious for riding out hurricanes. If Key West experienced a 12 foot storm surge, as occurred in parts of the Gulf Coast, it would be game over for the entire community. There’s hardy and then there’s stupid. The question I ask is what will the media do when a bona fide Category 4 or 5 rolls up on our doorstep? I call it “Chicken Little Syndrome” … desensitized by all the hype over “normal” storms, people might fail to react with vigilance when the big one hits.

Meanwhile, on went the Republican National Convention in Tampa, shortened by a day because of the storm, but chock full of baloney nonetheless. I thought N.J. Gov. Christie spoke convincingly, as did Mitt Romney’s wife, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. But where was Todd Aiken, espousing his creative views on rape and pregnancy? And war hero or not, John McCain bugs me. He reminds me of the grumpy old man in Up!, and I can‘t believe he was the best the Republicans could come up with in 2008. I’m sure Clint Eastwood’s 12 minute “empty chair speech” will get a few hits on YouTube, but I found it painful to watch. An entire audience screaming “Make My Day” … jeesh. One final comment about political prevarication and fact checking. We express our indignation because politicians lie, and certainly there has been a lot of that going on with both parties. If we’re so indignant, why do we still drink the Koolaid? We vote for those lies. It’s a little like political Stockholm Syndrome, and perhaps if there was some political consequence to playing fast and loose with the facts, these clowns would stop doing it. The fact is most Americans, myself included, don’t have a clear understanding of the truth regarding issues that confront our nation, and until we are all more vested in the process, more apprised of what is fact and what is fiction, nothing will change. By the way, last week’s report photo was no accident; the women who make up The Faith Tones to me symbolize the face of the Republican Party today. The Democrats are the “cool” people and the Republicans are the nerds.

West Nile Virus has hit hard in Texas and this year, there have been a whopping 66 deaths nationwide attributed to the mosquito-born disease. Up here in the GWN, we’ve had noticeably less mosquitoes this season. Here’s something we don’t talk about every day: drug resistant bacteria. The CRKP super bug was first discovered around ten years ago in North Carolina. It resurfaced in Los Angeles county in 2010, and this one is an epidemic waiting to happen. This bacteria is particularly onerous in that it mutates and can transfer its drug-resistant characteristics to other bacteria. Comforting to note that these super bugs seem to surface in hospitals and nursing homes. I’d like to have stock in the drug company that comes up with the magic bullet for this one. Google CRKP and add it to your list of phobias. The only antibiotic currently available that kills it also wreaks havoc on the kidneys. I’ve said this many times before; that while I’ve always assumed it will be mankind that causes its own downfall, it is becoming increasingly apparent to me that Mother Nature will beat us to the punch. Just ask the dinosaurs who’s boss.

Final note: lyricist Hal David died. David co-wrote with Burt Bacharach and penned such hits as Do You Know the Way to San Jose (I love that one) and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head. He also wrote that Grammy winning Carpenters hit Close to You, but I won’t hold that against him.

Can’t wait to hear what the Donkeys have to say this week.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 8/27/12

Yesterday marked the 20^th anniversary of the first time I met my future wife Shauna. We’d spoken on the phone a few times, and written letters to each other, and finally, on August 26, 1992, we agreed to meet at Niagara-on-the-Lake for supper. I convinced her that this location was equidistant from Buffalo and Toronto, and being geographically challenged, she believed me. In fact, Niagara-on-the-Lake is much closer to Buffalo, and I suppose I was hedging my bets. She was almost two hours late, but when we finally met we became fast friends. I remember sitting in her little red Mazda RX-7 after the whole town had gone to bed, listening to The Guitar Trio with Paco de Lucia, a guitarist Shauna and I both enjoy and have since seen several times. Her intelligence, her passion for music, and her sense of humor stole my heart that night, and I didn’t have a chance. Within a year, I proposed marriage to her, in a song I wrote, and surprisingly, she said yes. Because my decision to propose was made at the last minute, I didn’t have a proper engagement ring, so I used a hose clamp from my tool box instead. You snooze, you lose girfren. Marriage is not for sissies, but after eighteen years, we’re beginning to figure it out. She is still late a lot of the time, but I think I made the right decision.

Apparently what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas. Naked photographs of Royal playboy Prince Harry have surfaced, thanks to celebrity bashers TMZ, and are circulating in the tabloids. Apparently Harry was playing strip billiards with some alleged friends and the crown jewels were exposed. I’m sure Britons have seen far worse, and if memory serves me correctly, some paparazzi scum managed to snap Prince Chuck in the nude a long time ago. My question is, how much did the “photographer” get for those Harry photos? Hope it was worth it, because you are now an international scuzzball. Same goes for the a-hole who sold that photo of Michael Phelps taking a hit off a bong after the Beijing Olympics. Look for the new movie about rampant opportunism, coming soon to a theatre near you: Scumbag Millionaire.

How about that Teabagger-endorsed bozo (and six term) Missouri Representative Todd Akin, claiming that “legitimately” raped women don’t get pregnant? Whuh? This is the Republican strategy for saving money? It’s the new, inexpensive way to prevent pregnancy … will it away! While we’re at it, let’s scrap all stem cell research, because some people think that phrenology and bloodletting are far more effective in treating life threatening illnesses. I do not see any way that we could claim that Akin’s comments were taken out of context. That is quite simply a dumb ass thing to believe, much less to say! And I keep repeating it every four years, especially since the controversial Bush/Gore race in 2000; America has become hopelessly crippled by partisan politics. If the Founding Fathers could see how far off the rails this train has gone, they might have opted for some form of autocracy. What infuriates me is that Republican or Democrat, whoever wins in November will be hamstrung by a corrupt and self-serving Congress. At least I can voice this opinion with impunity, for now at least.

They say the number seven is good luck, and yet that number was linked to infamy last week. It’s the 7^th time Mark David Chapman is up for parole for the murder of John Lennon. I don’t think so, Mr. Chapman. Imagine there’s a prison, where bad guys never leave. And after giving up his fight to clear his name of allegations he “juiced,” seven time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has thrown in the towel and will be stripped of his Tour de France medals. Armstrong may have been wise to give it up. While no test has proven he used performance enhancing drugs in his competitions, somehow this scandal just kept coming, and “eyewitnesses” have come forward to testify they saw Armstrong do the dirty deed. He can now walk away from this “witch hunt” as he called it and focus on his charitable endeavors. This one is complicated. I know that doping is fairly common in competitive cycling, and I’ll wager that a lot of his less successful competitors were juicing as well. Rules are rules, and if he did cheat, I suppose the punishment fit’s the crime. If it can be proven. Is there indisputable proof he cheated? Perhaps. Dope or no dope, the guy was a winner in my book. He beat cancer and still remained competitive. His was such a great story: I guess I just don’t want to believe it‘s a lie. When cynicism becomes the norm, no one will dare to dream. Finally, first man on the moon Neil Armstrong has passed away. We thought it was a big step Neil.

Verse #1: “A year ago I didn’t know, didn’t have a clue what I was waiting for/ Passing time, imperfect rhymes, didn’t have a clue who I was writing for. Cho: And I’m telling you I love you, and I’m asking you to please consider me / Oh please, please Shauna Leigh, will you marry me?”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 8/20/12

Shauna’s birthday was last week and I have always been at a loss to decide what to give her as a gift. It’s been a while since I gave her anything of real value and I was feeling a little guilty about it when lo and behold my problem was solved. Well, sort of. It turns out Barbara Streisand is coming to Toronto in October and will be accompanied by trumpet player extraordinaire Chris Botti. While I have no interest in seeing Streisand, I am a big fan of Botti and have seen him perform several times. I told Shauna that she could pick out her seats and I would purchase the tickets. That’s the “sort of” part. I have never in my life paid as much for concert tickets as I paid for those Streisand seats! It was absolutely outrageous, and while the tickets I purchased were on the floor, they were far from the best seats in the house. Thankfully, her mom is a huge fan and I will happily offer my ticket to her, and even drive the two of them down to the Air Canada Centre to see the show. Shauna and her mom will appreciate that concert far more than I ever would. Jewelry is always a viable alternative, but this gift of music will be something unique: a memory that Shauna and her mom will share forever. When I grumble about the cost I keep hearing Shauna’s late brother whispering in my ear, something he said just before he passed on: “Don’t postpone joy!” At a time when fairly well all my disposable income is being poured into the long overdue completion of this house, giving Shauna the gift of music makes me very happy. To boot, I get brownie points with her mom.

This morning I read an interesting article in the NY Times entitled Raising the Ritalin Generation and it was about the author’s experiences with that drug and what she felt was its over use. Her eight-year-old boy was having trouble focusing in school and his teacher suggested he be tested for AD HD. Her point seemed to be that not enough attention is paid to the possible side effects, especially on a young child. While some children do in fact have severe attention deficit disorder, there are plenty who don’t and are prescribed the drug unnecessarily. The main thrust of the article seemed to be that in general, we are becoming or have become a society that looks for magic bullet solutions to complicated problems. This struck a nerve with me. Maybe the kid didn’t focus because he had a bad teacher, or because he was like every other energetic kid who would rather play outside than read about Magellan. We take pills to get erections, to put us to sleep, to wake us up, keep us from being depressed, or to counter the side effects of other pills with dubious effectiveness. One need only listen to the sometimes ludicrous laundry list of possible side effects in the fast-talking disclaimers to realize that something may be wrong here. May causing bleeding from every orifice in your body … if you feel like killing yourself or others, stop taking the drug … don’t take this drug if you drink water, eat meat, or use a cell phone, and on and on. My wife Shauna suffers from several chronic illnesses which cause her great discomfort. One of those illnesses, fibromyalgia, has been particularly debilitating. She has tried many drugs to provide her some relief, none which have been particularly helpful. There is drug being hyped on T.V. these days called Lyrica which professes to provide relief for fibromyaligia symptoms. If you want a laugh sometime, google it and read the page entitled “Lyrica is not for everyone.” Years ago, Shauna tried what I think was a similar drug that was widely recommended called Amitriptyline. Basically it was an anti-depressant and it did not help in any way. In fact, it made matters much worse. Shauna gained a lot of weight that was subsequently difficult to shed, the drug made her into a zombie, did nothing to relieve her pain, and she had to wean herself off it very slowly. It is still being prescribed and I wonder what the long term effects are. While pills can certainly improve our lives, caveat emptor, nothing comes for free.

Speaking of drugs that don’t help, have you read about the drug generally referred to as “bath salts”? As I understand it, bath salts is basically another synthetic designer drug similar in effect to the very destructive crystal meth which has metastasized in North America. Bath salts, of which there are many variations, was up until very recently legally available and sold in head shops and on the internet. It first came onto my radar when I heard about that guy in Miami who ate the face off another guy while reportedly high on bath salts. In my wildest fits of teenaged stupidity I was never tempted to sniff airplane glue and inhale spray deodorant. Of course turning one’s brain into lunchmeat is bad enough, but these bath salts apparently inspire psychotic, violent behavior as well. Give me some of that! Who wants to smoke a doob and curl up to Cat Stevens when you can crank up your The Flesh Eaters (yes, there is a band by that name) album, snort some “BS” and chow down on some face. Now you're talkin'! Scary stuff.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 8/13/12

Last Saturday I attended my fourth annual Western New York powerboat poker run in Buffalo. Because of the storms last weekend there was some concern they might call off the event, but come Saturday morning we fired up my friend’s vintage twin screw 1972 27’ Magnum Marine powerboat and headed up the Niagara River to the Erie Basin Marina to join 60 or more other boats in town for the run. Sadly, the open water portion of the run was cancelled because the threatening weather and the 5’-7’waves. While many of the boats in the run could have handled the rough seas, there was always the distinct possibility that one of those high performance behemoths would break down and the organizers felt it would be better to avoid the 20 mile run down the lake to Sunset Bay. Nobody wants to be dead in the water when the winds are gusting to 40mph and the sky is threatening rain and thunderstorms. In years passed, that open water portion of the run has typically been the most entertaining part of the ride.

Since I was a little boy, I have had a fascination with boating in rough water. I get tears of nostalgia when I remember my first little aluminum boat, later named The Raging African Queen (thank you renowned Buffalo artist Peter Stephens for taking it upon yourself to paint that horrible name on the transom of my boat with indestructible yellow Rust-o-leum), and the fun I used to have as a ten year old boy taking it out in rough weather. The trick was to keep the boat afloat until after I had cleared the breakers out past the sandbar, then to jump into the boat quickly, fire up the little Johnson 51/2 horsepower outboard and head out at just the right angle into the waves before the high winds could blow me sideways and sink or capsize the boat. I became quite good at it. Later, I did the same thing with my 13’ Boston Whaler, and most of the other boats I owned. The shallowest of all the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is particularly treacherous when small craft warnings are in effect. The chop tends to be steep and deep and misjudging it can easily be fatal. Davy Jones’ locker is full of drunken Western New York fishermen, trying to pee off the stern of their boat in high winds. During my ill spent young adulthood, I did some ridiculous things with and in The Raging African Queen. One choppy day we drove the approximately five miles from our summer home on Lake Erie over to Holloway Bay, on plane, standing on top of the seats, and steering the boat by leaning to the left and right. Another time, at night, with about seven people in the boat on one of our legendary booze cruises, we actually sunk the boat while driving along the shore. It wasn’t until the boat was completely underwater that I and my inebriated crew abandoned ship. I distinctly remember holding the transom of the boat up in shoulder deep water, probably with the motor still running, in order to keep the motor from submerging. While age and experience have somewhat tempered my horrific bad judgment, I am still prone to the occasional bout of unprecedented stupidity. One October day on Lake Ontario -- now in my 40s mind you --I attached the ignition kill switch to my belt and headed out in the open water looking for the perfect wave. Failing that I made the ill-considered commitment to jump the wake of a rather large passing naval ship. With the crew looking on, I hit that enormous wake at perhaps 15-20 knots before realizing I had made a serious mistake. My 20’ HydraSport was clearly not designed to leave the water, but leave the water it did. I suspect that from propeller to the water’s surface, I was around 3 feet off the water, and I remember waking up on the floor of the boat, on my back, engine stalled, hearing the crew members of the now distant navel vessel laughing uncontrollably at my stupidity. I am only on this earth to spread joy to the masses.

Renowned composer Marvin Hamlisch died last week at 68. The London Summer Olympics are over.  Civil war in Syria is escalating and the UN seems powerless to stem the violence. Kofi Anan, meet Neville Chamberlain. Nice job by the way, doing nothing. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could simply add something to the water supply that rendered men less aggressive? Mitt the twit Romney picked his running mate, the conservative Wisconsin Republican congressman Paul Ryan. Of course the Ryan is pro life and anti homo, two strikes against him in my book. He believes that the fetus enjoys full legal rights at conception … that is, of course, unless it is a homosexual. Pregnant moms beware, your unformed fetus may have retained an attorney. Law and Order: Fetal Justice. If Romney is to have chance in this election, he’d better focus a little more on state and a little less on church. By the way, it looks as if the mudslinging has started early this year, and both sides have come out swinging with their lies and innuendo. With the money those PAC bastards raise and spend on below-the-belt negative ad campaigning we could probably house a few million homeless Americans, maybe even cure cancer. Then again, what has politics ever had to do with helping people? Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 8/6/12

Almost every day for the past week we have been awakened to the sound of an excavator on our property. Four years after the construction of our house, we are finally getting around to cleaning up the grounds and to landscaping. We had boulders lying around the property from the original basement excavation and felled trees stacked along our driveway. Those trees like so much of the other construction debris were never removed from the property. Although everything is parched right now, it is important to consider and provide for proper drainage. Because we are at the bottom of a hill, water diversion is an important issue. When we get heavy rains, we need to ensure that runoff is diverted away from our and our neighbors’ properties. To that end, in our original site plan we included retention ponds and diversionary culverts along our driveway. We even put in a tile bed next to our house to capture runoff from the roof. Because of a particularly difficult next door neighbor, who caused us a great deal of aggravation and who managed to stir up unnecessary controversy among other much less affected neighbors, we ended up substantially overcompensating for potential drainage issues, at great expense to us. That same neighbor had, several years before our build enlisted our support to essentially double the size of improvements to his property, something that in retrospect seems far too generous of us. The good news is that, through the building process, we became better friends with our neighbors on the other side, who have been both understanding and patient with our construction. When all the earth moving is complete, we will finally have a much more presentable property. We have further plans to remediate some of the shortcomings of the original builder, but the big stuff will be soon over. If you are considering the construction of a custom round log home, I can certainly tell you what not to do. We broke ground in the Spring of 2007.

The other day I came across something interesting that I picked up and then forgot about when we were cleaning out Mom and Dad’s house. It was an old guest book and in it were brief testimonials to Harry Lehman, my maternal grandfather, founder and president of The Wildroot Company, Inc.. Wildroot was a Buffalo based manufacturer of hair tonic and other related products, and in its day, it was a big company. The occasion  for the guest book was some kind of national convention in Savannah, Georgia, and all the employees who attended wrote something in that book. I never knew my grandfather - I was perhaps three when he died - but my mom idolized him and filled me with all sorts of stories about what a great man he was. She told me that the door to his office was always open to any Wildroot employee, and that all the people who worked for him loved him and considered him a fair and decent boss. How often do we hear that about the big bosses today? I suppose he wasn't loved by everyone, still it was refreshing to read so many positive comments, some put in the form of creative limericks and poems. Of particular interest to me were some sketches I found in the middle of the book (see above photo). Al Capp, creator of the famous comic strip L’il Abner had been employed by The Wildroot Co. Inc. to illustrate for one of its ad campaigns. I believe the ads involved his character Fearless Fosdick. Capp and my grandfather were friends and for years two framed sketches he’d done for Grampy hung in my childhood home. I still have the sketch of L’il Abner that Capp drew for my deceased sister Joanne, and my sister Jill has a sketch of Mammy Yokum that he drew for her. As I was paging through the guest book, I was surprised to see two sketches in it, one by Stu Hemple, a famous illustrator in his own right, who had worked for Capp, and the other by Al Capp himself. A little Antiques Roadshow moment for all of you. While I doubt these sketches are particularly valuable, they are priceless to me.

With the London Summer Olympics winding down, I have enjoyed watching the competitions. As always, the coverage on Canadian television is far better than that which is available Stateside. Outrageuos judging in the boxing competition! That guy from Azerbaijan should have been a clear loser after six knockdowns by the Japanese guy. Rock star Michael Phelps won twenty-two medals (18 of the gold), far exceeding what he needed to be the most medaled Olympian in history. Jamaica’s Usaine “Lightning” Bolt won gold in the men’s 100 metre dash, and boy was he fast. There was a lot of talk the other day about the disqualification of one of the Canadian horses in an equestrian event due to a controversial injury. At first I made fun of Canada’s first gold medal in these summer games (because after all, I am an ignorant yank), because it was in the trampoline event, but Rosie MacLennan's performance set me straight and made a believer out of me. All in all the Olympics were as entertaining as always, and in many ways a reminder that while governments continue to spin their political webs, their countrymen and women are often reflective of that which is decent and honorable in the human struggle. Nice to see that from time to time.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 7/31/12

How time flies. As I sometimes do, I went back in my files to read my report from the previous year, and a year ago today, I wrote that my mom was gravely ill and that I would not be posting for a few weeks. She passed within the next three weeks and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since that time. As Shauna’s parents are now in their late 80’s I once again prepare for the challenges we will face, balancing their desire for independence  with their increased needs for assistance. Sometimes reconciling the two is not a pleasant experience, either for the parent or the child.

The London Summer Olympic Games have begun, and last Friday we enjoyed the broadcast of the opening ceremonies. I particularly liked the depiction of early industrial London and the symbolic forging of the Olympic rings. Someone on the internet referred to it as leftist drivel, or something to that effect. I could have done without the sky littered with flying Mary Poppins, or the creepy giant inflatable baby, but that’s just me. One final comment on the opening ceremonies: I think it is time for Sir Paul McCartney to fade quietly into the night. While I love the music of the Beatles, and I think McCartney is a gifted songwriter, it’s enough already.

Of course, there have been the usual Olympic controversies, as there always are when the world is watching. There was the gate crashing woman in red seen marching with the Indian athletes in the opening ceremonies. In the “Oops!” department, we had the raising of the South Korean flag before the women’s football game between North Korea and Columbia. And once again the Olympic torch was under fire. During the Vancouver olympics people were upset because the torch was only visible from a distance, and from behind an ugly chain link security fence. Now, in London, one cannot even see the torch unless one is inside the stadium. Pyro that I am, I always love it when they light that torch. Fast forward over the marching athletes (hurry up Gabon!) and get on with the fire lighting event! London Mayor Boris Johnson assures us anybody can see the London flame, on T.V that is. One thing that has been on the news constantly over the past few days is the number of empty seats. I don’t know if it is no-shows who have paid or some booking screw up, but I think it would be better for everyone if the coordinators could figure out how to fill those seats, especially given the ill-conceived placement of the torch. Republican presidential candidate Mitt “The Twit” Romney put his foot in his mouth with his stupid Anglo Saxon heritage remarks and his ill-considered questioning of how well the London summer games will “work out.” Diplomacy is after all a part of the job, and if he can’t figure out how to positively spin an Olympic Games photo opportunity, perhaps he’s got a public relations problem. How does that old saying go: better to say nothing and look like a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt? All eyes were on over-hyped swimmer Michael Phelps, who did not even place in the 400 Meter individual medley, beat handily by teammate Ryan Lochte. Phelps did medal in the 400 Meter Freestyle relay, along with Lochte, and is I believe two medals away from an all time record. Lots of press about the American swimmers, but how about that French swimmer Yannick Agnel? I love it when the under-hyped shine. The Brits were favored to dominate the cycling competition, but Kazakhstan’s Alexandre Vinokourov won the gold in the men’s cycling road race, and I believe Columbia and Norway were silver ad bronze. Personally, my favorites are the gymnastics events, and I will make every effort to catch as many of those contests as possible.

While some of the Olympic tennis matches were rained out at Wimbledon, here in the Great White North we are still parched. I thought we were going to get some soaking rain today, but consulting my weather radar, I see that we are not going to get nearly as much as expected. Presently we are doing some long overdue landscaping on our property, and the approach to our house looks like a dust bowl. Today’s brief showers did something to hold down the dust but I fear it will be back soon. I heard on the news today that a local fireworks event was cancelled, for fear of sparking a catastrophic fire. My concern is “dry” lightning, because while we are getting no rain, there has been some lightning and thunder. I believe there was a fire in Algonquin Park last week, perhaps sparked by lightning.

Final note. I just finished Hitchen’s book God is Not Great, and as much as I agree with many of his points about the potential evils of religion, I still hold on to the slim hope of an afterlife. Mom, if you’re out there, I think about you every day. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED