Fuck Off Mr. Bloomberg

The mayor of New York was born several months after Pearl Harbor. He is ten years older than me. His net worth is around $19 billion dollars making him the 30th wealthiest man in the world. It's amazing what a difference those ten years make for one's fortune. Wikipedia has listed Bloomberg as a business magnate, politician, and philanthropist. The three-time mayor was also born in Boston. I have never seen him in a Red Sox cap. That betrayal of roots said a lot about the man as well as his never having given a bum a dime. Philanthropy in his book is never one-on-one, although Bloomberg has donated millions to seemingly good causes. His money seemed clean, but no one has earned a fortune without one good crime. The ambassador last night asked in the kitchen of the residence why I hated the mayor. "I lived in New York under him. It was a good time for the city." We had been together on 9/11. My following years had been spent in Thailand. I hated living under the GOP. "If you were living in Lower Manhattan. He also used his money to change the third term rule. His re-election campaign was not on his merits, but on the unlikelihood on his opponent beating him. Bloomberg won by 4% points. $100 million to convince voters to stay home. He spent almost the same amount of his own money to win his first election." "There's no crime in that." "No crime, but it's not right either, but the mayor has never had trouble pretending a non-crime was a crime. He had the police arrest nearly 2000 demonstrators at the GOP presidential convention in 2004. 90% of those arrests were thrown out of court and his campaign against marijuana led to the illegal search and seizure of over a million New Yorkers." "It couldn't be a million." The ambassador liked to dispute numbers. "Okay, they stopped a million and arrested tens of thousands." A nugget of data dislodged from the purgatory of my memory. "350,000 since he was elected and more than 50,000 in 2010." "The police are just doing their job." "No, they are stopping young men on the street illegally and searching them for drugs. If they don't find them, then they are asked, if they have drugs. if they say yes, then the crime is upgraded to a felony. And no one in New York talks about this, because the Mayor has paid off the media. And he has made a mess of the school system by placing his unqualified cronies into position of power to enforce his beliefs of the system." "But isn't he a liberal." "Only on the surface, but he's thinking about running for the nomination of GOP candidate for president and this week wants to show he's tough on crime he is by threatening to break the Occupy Wall Street movement. He even went so far as to blame Congress for the financial debacle caused by the greed of the banks. Is he a bad man? No, because he does good things, but he's also done a lot of bad and he could do a lot worse if he hits the number 271." "271?" "The number of electoral votes GW Bush received in 2000. Bloomberg has figured it will cost him $500 million to buy his way into the White House. The first Jewish president, unless you count FDR." "FDR wasn't Jewish." "He was for Hitler and that is good enough for the GOP. Bloomberg could never get the nomination from either party, but if he does run he'll do so as a 3rd party. Just wait and watch. It should be interesting." The ambassador had heard enough of my rant and went upstairs in the residence to watch the BBC News. It had no commercials. I stayed in the kitchen to cook my dinner. Cous-cous with pork, carrots, and apples tasted good on a cold rainy night. I poured myself a glass of Cote du Rhone and lifted my glass. I was all alone, but I had a toast. "Fuck Off Mr. Bloomberg." It felt good saying it aloud. Even better then second and best the third, because I meant it.

MAKE NICE / Bet On Crazy by Peter Nolan Smith



The Diamond District on West 47th Street was a closed community. Family histories have been intertwined by marriages and business deals. The smiling faces on the surface hid the turbid conflict behind the scenes. My boss, Manny, and his son, Richie Boy, followed the Corleone tradition of never laundering family troubles in public. Basing their discretion on THE GODFATHER was better than adopting the murderous plot-line of GOODFELLAS.

For the most part our lips were sealed by the Jewish version of omerta, but anyone outside the family was fair game for Manny, who rarely had a nice word for his family, workers, and business associates.

One morning in summer of 2010 I sold a walk-in customer a diamond for $55,000. The architect from Chicago had a 25th wedding anniversary in a week. The deal was consummated in less than thirty minutes. Richie Boy congratulated my success.

“Well done.” Richie Boy loved sales. He had bills to pay.

“All part of a day’s work.” I was pleased with the sale. The commish covered a flight to visit my kids in Thailand. “But that was easy.”

“Wham-blam, thank you, ma’am.” It was a good way to start off the day.

“It’s always easy, when the customer needs what you have.” Manny commented from his desk. Both of us groaned in anticipation of a further assault of negativism.

“Don’t fool yourself. Everyone is a piece of shit.” Manny stood up with difficulty. His hip was bothering him, but he came to work every day on time. The diamond exchange was the only life that the eighty year-old had left in the world. He examined the paperwork.

“Not everyone.” Richie Boy had inherited many of Manny’s traits, but he took more after his mother in hoping everything worked out in the end.

“Everyone is a piece of shit.” Manny had a long list of POSs. Richie Boy and I topped the charts.

“Great, I’ll call the customer and tell him that I won’t sell the diamond to him, since he’s a piece of shit.” I picked up the phone.

“Save the show for your friends.” Manny added up the cost of the diamond, the ring, and the setting of the stone. “Why didn’t you get more money?”

“Leave him alone. He did good.” Richie Boy was getting a headache.

“He did his job and he did it, because he wants money.” Manny had been mean from day 1, but in recent years he had excelled in pulling the knife in a wound.

“I’m going out for a cup of coffee.” I had heard enough of this conversation to know its destination was more of the same. I asked Manny, “You want one?”

“Here.” Manny’s hand fumbled into his pocket.

“I don’t need your money.” He was a mean old man. but the twenty years of supporting me and mine granted him a special place in my heart.

I walked outside and took a deep breath.

Inside the exchange Richie Boy and Manny were squared off toe-to-toe, splashing water under the bridge back and forth. Sometimes I thought that the bickering was an act, but not this morning and I went next door to the Russian coffee shop.

Several dealers were standing in the foyer. I said hello to Abel. The young Hassidic broker and I had sold several diamonds. He was a good man. When Manny lost a carat diamond memoed from him, Abel had knocked $500 off the price. Manny had called him a piece of shit for that gesture. I never mentioned the insult to Abel. Manny was man enough to tell people they were piece of shit to their face.

“How goes it?”

“Not bad.” I told him about the sale. Abel congratulated my luck and then said, “Whose stone?”

“None of your business.”

“Okay.” He seemed hurt by my cold shoulder, but in this business if a diamond broker commented in open conversation about a sale, then the information would be common knowledge from 5th Avenue to Avenue of the Americas by day’s end, albeit filtered through a myriad of mouths to be malformed into a miscarriage of the truth.

“What do you think about Farrid?” Abel had dealing with every ethnic group on the street. Money was money.

“Richie Boy’s old partner from the retail store on 5th Avenue?” I clenched my right hand into a fist.

“The Persian.” No one in the Diamond District called Iranian Jews Iranian. There were Persians and the entire tribe had colonized the Long island suburb of Great Neck.

“You want me to say good for him?” Our business depended on trust.

“He wants a stone from me.”

“Better you talk to Richie Boy about that.” I had sold a million-dollar ruby for Farrid and Richie Boy. The Persian had stiffed me for $2000 on the commish and then said that I had fucked up the sale.

“Are you saying he’s no good?” Abel considered me a ‘sheygutz’, which for a Hassid was one step less pejorative than a goy.

“I’m not saying nothing. It’s not my place.” Farrid also bounced the commission check twice. He was supposedly Richie Boy’s money man for the store. His accounts were persistently under-financed. His wealth had been sucked dry by Bernie Madoff.

“Thanks. I owe you a coffee.”

“I didn’t say nothing.” I paid for my coffee.

“And thanks for that.”

I returned to the exchange. Richie Boy was on the phone with a customer. Manny was fiddling with the electrical connection to his adding machine. It dated back to 1982. He raised his head and asked, “Where’s my coffee?"

“I forgot it.”

“Everyone thinks about themselves.”

I let it go. I wasn’t looking for a fight. The rest of the morning passed without incident. A little past noon Richie Boy hung up his cellphone and came over to my desk.

“Farrid just called me.”

“And?" “He said you told Abel not to give him a stone.”

“Abel asked me about him and I said it wasn’t my place to comment on him.”

“Farrid says you said bad for him.”

“I said nothing. He can think whatever he wants.”

“I do business with him.”

“I never will.”

“You made money from that deal.”

“Yes, I did and he screw me out of two grand.” It was money out of the mouths of my children. “I’ll never say bad about him to anyone else, but you can tell him if he’s ever in a room alone, he had a minute to leave.”

“And what?” He wanted me to paint the entire picture.

“Richie Boy, you know me a long time.” We had met at Hurrah, a punk disco on West 62nd Street. His uncle had been an off-duty cop working as security. Sam had seen me at my worst and Richie Boy had witnessed my breaking a drug dealer’s nose with a rolled-up GQ magazine for his calling me an asshole. It had been a double-issue. “I’ll be a nice guy. If Farrid is with his family, then he can stay until the end of their meal. But he is never to say hello to me or expect me to say good for him. He’s a piece of shit.”

“See, you feel the same way as me.” Manny was near-deaf, but the old man could hear whatever he wanted to hear. “Everyone’s a piece of shit and I know what Farrid did to you. He screwed with your family. He’s a piece of shit.”

“You’re right.” I usually hated when Manny proved that he was right, but this time I was 100% in agreement.

“But better to say nothing to Farrid.” Manny came from Brownsville. Mike Tyson’s old neighborhood. No one knew how tough it was there.

“What’s there to say?” I was hot enough to walk over to Farrid’s office and do something crazy. Only I was leaving for Thailand to see my kids. Two months in the Orient with my two wives. I didn’t need any trouble. Both women were trouble enough, so I said to Manny, “I’m going to be cool. I won’t speak to the piece of shit. He won’t get a fork in the eye. End of story.”

"Of course he could pay me the $2000. Then I'll be real nice."

"No chance of that happening."

I thought that was the end of it, except that afternoon Farrid saw me on the street. I blanked him like a dog. He called up and asked if we had a problem.

“No problem that $2000 would cure..” I hung up the phone.

Not speaking with pieces of shit makes life easier, but business was business and and the Persian telephoned our office several times in the next few days. I never answered the phone. I told everyone else to field the call. None of them wanted to answer either. Richie Boy’s partner was a piece of shit to them too. Manny fielded the call. He would speak to anyone. I told him thanks. I didn’t want to make any trouble before I left.

But some people can leave well enough alone and the next morning Richie Boy tapped me in the chest with a pen, “I want you to be good to him. I make money with him.”

I knocked away the pen. I wasn't in a fun mood.

“Really?” His partner had shorted everyone for cash, but I was on the wrong side of the equation. I was a goy. Then again I was a math major in university. I could add and subtract and no matter how Richie Boy painted his partner, Farrid was still a donkey in my eyes.

"Really."

I kept my mouth shut. This was 2010. Jobs weren’t easy to hold and even harder to get. Later I mentioned Richie Boy’s comment to Manny.

“What are you going to do?” “Nothing.” It was the best tactic. “Nothing?” Manny was a starker. That meant a tough guy in Yiddish. “Whatever I do won’t change the fact that Richie Boy’s partner is a piece of shit.” I had forgiven Richie Boy for backing Farrid over me. We went back 30 years and those decades time outweighed his partner’s bad. Only by a little, but enough to cool down my core anger. “Can you keep your mouth shut?” Manny was a peacemaker. Fighting at our age was unbecoming, unless winning was the only option.

“As long as he keeps out of my face. No problem.” I didn’t like thieves.

“Then that’s the end of the story."

“So it would seem.” I liked Manny. The old man didn't take shit. People like Manny were hard to find. People like Richie Boy’s partner were everywhere. Farrid was lucky that I was leaving town.

It was a good thing, especially if I wouldn't have to make nice to a piece of shit.

It was not in my job description.

Fried Rat A La Ban Nok

Last January I returned to Thailand to celebrate my daughter's birthday. Ban-nok was cold that time of year and one night my ex-wife’s brother-in-law, his friends, and I drank rice whiskey around a blazing bonfire.

Halfway through the second bottle of lao-khao a young man entered the circle of light. A long small-bore rifle rested on his shoulder and he hefted a lumpy plastic bag. At first I thought he had shot a few snakes, but he emptied the bag onto a nearby platform. An avalanche of field rats cascaded across the wood. They were all dead, but my daughter yeeked in horror. She hated rats.

The men around the fire were of a different mind. Rats were good for their sex drive. Lips smacked in anticipation of an unexpected treat and my brother-in-law threw several more logs on the fire and then Bok picked up a cleaver to lop off the rats’ feet and tails with a machete. He fed them to the dogs.

The other men sliced garlics and chillies.

"Nuu a-roi." Bok was deep country. He had never been to Bangkok.

"Ching?" I’ve eaten small birds, snake, dog, and insects, but never rat or nuu.

Bok recognized my consternation and said, “Noo khao not same noo house. Only eat rice. Clean and aroi.”

Using a sharp knife Bok deftly sliced a small incision behind the ears to yank the fur from the carcass and then decapitated the rat. He repeated this with the other rats as a friend washed the body before gutting the belly. The dogs fought over the guts.

The bigger rats were grilled over the fire and the smaller one was mashed in a pestle with the chillies and garlic. The burning flesh had everyone but me licking their lips. Bok produced another bottle of lao khao. This time red. “Eat rat. drink lao khao si-daeng. have sex a long time.”

My ex-wife was already asleep. We hadn't slept together in years. Her family knew nothing of this and I was offfered the first piece of rat.

“What the fuck.” It can’t be any worse than snake.

Not bad. Not like chicken. More like rabbit.

After the meal we lay on the wooden platform and watched the stars circle the sky.

Bok explaioned that rat-catching is a good business. “150 one kilo. Make one day 500 baht. Rat steal rice. People eat rat. Good idea, mai?”

It was a pitch for money.

"Ban thii?" I answered all requests for money with a 'maybe'. I thanked Bok for the rat and went inside the house to fall asleep next to my daughter.

She was almost asleep."

"Pawther, khun kin nuu?"

"Mai kin." I had only had a few bites.

"Dii." She liked Mickey Mouse.

"Pai Non." I kissed her head. I didn't like lying to her, but Mickey Mouse wouldn't like my eating his kin, but he’s the house mouse for Disneyland.

Mai aroi.

Man's Best Friend

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The Drug Of The Right

When I was in high school in the late-60s, I steadfastly refused marijuana on the grounds that it was illegal by law. A good friend was working in a drug store. We did reds, whites, and Ludes. They were FDA-approved drugs. My mindset was not much different from the present population of America addicted to prescription drugs. I was wrong then and they are wrong now, for America is suffering a plague of prescription drugs. Overdose death from legal pills has outstripped the old demon drugs of cocaine and heroin. The country is flooded with Oxycodins and Viocodins, which are produced non-stop by their makers, Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories. No one is raiding their laboratories or sending police into the boardroom to halt this production of a phony and deadly opiate, because Abbott labs pay politicians to demonize marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. The war on drugs has been lost by the governments of the world. Reefer dealers make house calls in New York City and cocaine has reached the death offense nations of the Far East. Both are criminal under the present laws of the USA, however the time has come to legalize drugs as suggested in Ben Elton’s HIGH SOCIETY a brilliantly funny novel about an obscure MP rocketing to fame on the back of a drug legalization campaign. Free the weed. A correspondent in TIME magazine suggested back in 2009; “A deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver’s licenses.” This offer is only chipping away at laws such as New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, which have packed the prisons of America to a point where 1% of our population is a guest of the state. This number translates into 25% of the world’s inmates. At $30,000 per prisoner the penal budget for the USA comes to $90,000,000,000. Not all those 3 million convicts are pot smokers, but enough of them are to consider cutting them loose to hang around their houses smoking bongs. Barack Obama was subjected to a barrage from online questioners about legalization of marijuana. Pot is the #1 cash crop in California. $14 billion last year. 20% tax = $2.8 billion. Carlos Santana, guitar god, suggested, “Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.” Right on. Not that I smoke pot any more. I don't smoke it any less either. It's time for Obama to come out and say, "Free the weed." That bold statement is in our country's best interests no matter what Big Pharma pays TV to tell the people what to think. ps I’m not for Hydro-weed, but natural grass. It’s the real thing.

What's Your Number?

The BBC News reported the birth of Baby # 7,000,000,000 in the Philippines. Later in the day they added a calculator to divine where readers should in the scheme of things. Having been born in May of 1952 I ended up the 2,620,399,874th person alive on Earth and the 75,870,745,158th person to have lived since history began in 50,000 BC. Only one of billions. I almost feel like a McDonald burger. They've served over 99 Billion. I ate at least of thousand of them. And lived to tell the tale. To figure out your number in the Big Line-Up please go to the following URL from the BBC News ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515 I'll beat most of you.

Kind Words From The Far Right

Thirty summers ago I was stuck in New York waiting for a doorman job in Gemany. My pockets were empty and my rent was a month late. Many of my friends worked at Danceteria on West 21st Street. I ate at the BBQ on the roof and drank for free. The owner was a fan of my poetry and John never criticized my glomming from the bartenders. I finally received the phone call from Germany. A one-way Lufthansa ticket awaited me at JFK. I needed a little money in my pocket and hit up a number of friends for $20 each. John was fast in handing over his donation. "I'll be saving money by getting you away from my bar." "I don't drink that much." "7-8 drinks a night add up. Not that I mind." He was in a good mood. The Bush Tetras were performing at midnight and they packed the club with good-looking women and men after good-looking women. "Have you ever been to Germany before." "No." No one in my family had been to Germany since the Great War. "What's where the Beatles found their magic?" John had played bass in a long-hair band during the 60s. "Seems to be the only thing anyone knows about Hamburg." I was no different, except I offered another nugget. It was only a hunch. "I think Dracula shipped out of Hamburg." "Dracula didn't ship out of Hamburg." A young drunk in a suit said loudly and added with conviction. "He left for england out of Varna." "I stand corrected, thanks." I turned back to John, but he was confronted by the drunk, "don't I get a prize for that answer." "This isn't Jeopardy." John had little patience for annoying customers. They made up half the clientele of Danceteria. "Yeah, but I got it right, you asshole." The drunk pushed John hard and I stepped between them. No one laid a hand on my benefactor. "You two queers." "Thanks for the compliment." He could have called us 'sissies. "Now why don't you leave us alone." "I know who you are, you fucking asshole." The blonde-haired drunk pointed his finger at John. Spit flailed from his mouth. His drink slopped over the rim of his glass. The junior exec was a hang-over from the happy hour frequented by 9-5ers. "You own this bar, you wop." John's eyes went steely with the ethnic slur. "You want to make $100. Smack this guy." His offer sounded like an order from Don Corleone. "Yo, guy, take a walk." I said it nice. "I ain't a guy, you stupid Mick." "$100?" John gave the nod. A short right caught the drunk on his right temple. He never saw it coming. I grabbed his arms before he could hit the floor and tossed him to the bouncers. No one saw any of it, but John and me. "That was nice." John gave me the c-note with a pleased smile. "A lucky shot." I stuffed the bill in my pocket and my hand ached from the impact on the drunk's head. I was done for the night. "What about a drink?" John dragged me to the bar. "It's on me." "I wouldn't have it any other way." I ordered a screwdriver. It was the fifth of many more. My bon voyage fund stood at a little over $200. I put the cash in my wallet. At the end of the Bush Tetras John paid my taxi home. He knew how to make a man feel unwelcome. I was always grateful for that money and even when John slipped over to the far right I stayed in communication, because I knew that he would always remember that punch. Recently he posted an article from ABC News about the media investigating the possible malfeasance of federal involvement with the Finnish electric car make Fisker Karma. Here is the following dialogue The ABC News show Nightline is investigating Fisker Automotive, but is there anything new to report? Peter Nolan Smith it ain't a GTO, but neither is this watergate No one responded to that, so I added. Peter Nolan Smith abc is a zionist christian news station. the more lies, the less the truth And then Peter Nolan Smith oh yeah, one more thing free palestine. free the world A female friend of John - Do you live under a rock? John - No Mary, Peter lives under an "emotional Burka" He is a trickster; a provocateur who loves to stir up dissent, and he is to be regarded as a radical hedonist, but my friend at his core is a boston catholic Irishman..I would call him priest-like in his slavish devotion to Rome..., but none of the felony charges against him were sustained.....He has no affiliations.., like me, he says things to provoke a reaction...good guy....oy, he's single..Do you know a nice girl? No, I don't know any nice girls. 17 hours ago · Like John Argento OK then send him the bad girls..... 17 hours ago · Like Female Friend of John - Does he want your sloppy seconds? 17 hours ago · Like · 1 person John - I love when you talk dirty to me Mare........ I replied to Female Friend of John Peter Nolan Smith No, I live nowhere, but travel everywhere. I know a lot of bad girls, still. John, I traded catholicism for apostasy at the age of eight. The mass lost its magic without the Latin and I was faster than the priest's roaming hands. I am a devout non-believer and reject most Judeo-Christian thought. I'm living on three continents. America, Europe, and Asia. My back-up plan in New York is a pump-action shotgun and two jugs of moonshine then get on my friend's boat and sail to Bolivia. In europe it is drink all the liquor in the embassy, where I am writer in residence and in thailand I go on vacation with my two wives and our four children. Yes, I am related to Joseph Smith. about an hour ago ps Thanks for the burka suggestion but I've lost some weight recently and are any of you losers suggesting that the GTO isn't it. pps John I was over in Germany this afternoon and I can report that there are no more guys looking like nazis. Only like fat americans with bad mustaches. Wo ist Siegfried? ppps Séanmhar Samhain that gaelic. I now travel under an irish passport as well as cameroun and USA when I'm in Te Aviv hustling the yids. John you know what rock I lived under I liked that John called me a trickster. He does love the Irish and we love pizza.