It’s your ball
And you love it
It bounces high
And you bought it
With your own money
So hold on to it
In school, on the bus
You love it so much
You hate to play
Catch with it
Or even bounce it more
Than three times
Because you’re afraid it might get lost
But then you get tired
Of holding on
You put it down
Or give it to your sister
An hour later the ball
Is lost it’s not anywhere
You hate yourself
For letting it go
My breath is only good
For causing the fogging-up
Of mirrors and car windows
So that love and tic-tac-toe
Can be written on
Then the writing disappears
With no evidence that
A breath ever existed
He never ever cried
Even if there was a wolf
Then he did
Everyone thought he was kidding
He died
My poems are
Not vagina poems
Shy camouflage affairs
With pretty folds
With a pleasure nub
Buried all the way
In the middle,
But rather I write penis poems
Stick-out-strait sticks
Not too pretty
The message
For anyone with two eyes
Embarrassingly clear and hard
But something meaty
Something you can really
Sink your teeth into
There he was, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, Benny. Blech Blech Blech…the Benny of my youth; the Benny who my father hated until his last breath; the Benny who my father had five scotches over every Shabbos; the Benny who my mother loved and called Bubbles; the Benny with the big white choop. There he was, only five tables away from me with his big, white, shiny implants, looking like a putz exactly as my father had said.
I was waving at him like an idiot. Me in my wheelchair, waving spastically with a big yellow sign behind me, saying, “Please help 9 needy Holocaust survivors.” I told the waitress to tell him, “It’s me, Buddy, from Oceanside.” She told him. He looked up. The putz didn’t wave back. Five minutes later, Elaine, his wife, joined him. My legs started shaking. I could barely finish my iced tea.
Here, I’ll tell you the whole stupid, petty story. In 1963, Benny decided that everyone who got an aliyah must come up to the bimah and shake his hand. If they did not do that, they would not get an aliyah. So Jerry Rosenblum, joined by others including my father, who hated him and his pompous behavior, refused. In response, they were not given aliyahs anymore. In response to that, Jerry, Herbie, Max, Velvel (my father), and five other alcoholic malcontents, broke away and started their own shul.
Pretty stupid, pretty petty, huh? But guess what? Every Shabbos for at least five years, that’s all I heard about from my drunk father. “Benny, what a fascist! What a baal-gaava! I’d rather get cancer than shake that cock sucker’s hand!” Yeah, five years, including four years after we had already left the shul. I thought Benny was somehow connected to Hitler.
So I went up to the table. I had to talk to them. Finally get it out. I’m screaming, “Benny, Benny, it’s Buddy, it’s Buddy!” He turned away and looked down at his menu. “Elaine, Elaine, it’s Buddy, it’s Buddy!” She starts to motion to the waitress, they think I’m a handicap schnorer asking for money. Finally I scream, “Elaine Blech, it’s Buddy Eidelsberg.” Elaine screams, “Oh my God, Benny, it’s Buddy!” She gets up and starts hugging and kissing me. She gets her dress caught in my joy stick.
“How are you Elaine? You look great. Benny, Jay Kessler told me you were dying, but you look great. Blah, blah, blah.” But then I couldn’t wait any longer, I said, “What the hell happened?”
Putz Benny, “What happened with what?”
“My father, the shul, the aliyahs, the handshaking. Benny, tell me!” I had to repeat it five times. Elaine finally gets it. She says, “Benny, Buddy wants to know about the handshaking.” Smooth Benny, the author of at least six books, the author of the Idiot’s Guide to Yidishkeit, the Benny of at least twenty appearances on Sunday morning religious TV shows, answers calmly, “Oh, we had a minhag to shake the Rabbi’s hand. Jerry Rosenblum, followed by others including your father, said that it’s not halachic not to give aliyahs just because you don’t want to shake the Rabbi’s hand. Irwin Pyser, not me, decided to ask Rav Moshe Feinstein if it was halachic. Rav Moshe said yes.”
“So you kicked them out because they wouldn’t shake your hand?”
He starts getting a little pumped up now, spitting a little tuna, “No, I would never do that! They left to open the fire house.”
It didn’t smell very kosher to me. Benny wasn’t taking any responsibility. But because I’m such a whore, I went along with it. I wanted to make it right with Benny like my father never did. So I said, “Oh they were crazy, crazy guys. What pettiness!” Then Benny says, “It’s parsha Korach this week when Korach and his sons challenge Moshe’s authority. That’s exactly the week that your father and these guys started the fire house.” Then Elaine chimed in, “It’s from God. It’s all from God.”
Then I got into my shit. I said, “Did you have any idea how my father would come back from shul drunk, after making a scene, and then torment us about you; about what kind of fascist you were? And then my stupid mother would try defending you. You know how much she loved you. It didn’t stop after they left. We heard about it and we suffered. We were cut off from the community. All my friends, all my sister’s friends, all my mother’s friends went to Young Israel. We were pariahs. Don’t forget, Benny and Elaine, we were so close that we came to you for Pesach. I still remember your mother’s lemon meringue pie. You Elaine, you used to come with my mom to the CP center when she was first finding out about my condition.”
Elaine said, “Yes, it was like we were sisters, me and your mom. I missed her terribly after the fight. We didn’t talk after that.”
I continued, “My father was an alcoholic. Did you know that? Those guys, Jerry, Herbie, Al Freeze; they all drank. They had their kiddish club during Torah reading. Did you know that’s what they would do? After cursing you out, my father would come home and yell about you for another hour during Shabbos lunch.”
Elaine and Benny had no idea. Elaine said, “Oh my God, that’s awful Buddy.”
We’re all getting a little bit teary now. I go for the gold. I say, “And for what? All for some pettiness; all for kavod.”
“Yes Buddy, yes Buddy, for what, tzinas chinam,” said Benny the putz.
(At this point, I felt like a whore and like I’m selling out my father just so I can get off with Elaine and Benny. I mean, why wasn’t Benny copping to anything? Why did he have this minhag to shake his hand and why did he have to cling so hard to it? But I don’t say any of this. I so want to make peace with this guy. I was so happy that he let me get all of this shit out that I’ve been thinking about for the last 50 years. They listened to me and I’m a whore for anyone who listens to me, especially big Rabbis that have their own TV shows.)
I made the waitress take a picture of the three of us. I had to have a record of this. It’s too incredible. I didn’t say it, but for years, I was wanting to meet Benny. I knew that he came at least a couple times a year to Israel. He has two kids and grandkids here. I even tried finding him on Facebook. I needed a big picture of the three of us hugging. I need it on my wall in my room so that I can stare at it and think, “Benny’s okay.” I can look at that picture and say, “Hey look daddy, Benny’s a putz, but he’s okay really. You can forgive him now.”
I insist on paying for Benny and Elaine’s tuna fish sandwiches. This definitely brought them to tears. Benny said, “Buddy, you’re paying for us? I can’t allow this.” I said, “Benny, Benny, Benny, you have to let me pay. It’s a refuah for me, for you, and for my father.” Benny said, “Okay Buddy, this is something. It’s from God.” I said, “Benny, give me a kiss.” He bends down and gives me a kiss.
I look up to the sky and scream, “Fuck you dad!”
Every morning
I greet Boogie
The Arab cook in my café
“Good morning Arab
Your sister’s a cunt”
He answers
“Good morning Jew
Your mother’s a whore”
After this I know
Everything is right in the world
I order shakshuka
The handle of the pan
Burns like hell
Every day (not really) I’m going to blog about how much I gained or lost in the stock market, why, and how it’s all connected to the impending financial disaster. Sounds juicy, huh? I’m even going to give you the exact balance of my account and the daily gain/loss for that day. It will be kind of like a financial porn selfie. Who else would be psychotic enough to do that?
I’m doing this for a few reasons. One is that I’m completely obsessed with the market and I might as well share my obsession. Also, I think it’s fun to watch a gambler self-destruct in slow motion. The third reason is that I want to help you. I really do think that the financial world is going to implode soon, and I do believe that the stock market is going to hell. Gold and silver will be one of the only refuges.
A note to Hadara, my baby’s mommy: don’t worry, I have Me’odi’s money in another account, safe.
Daily comment: yesterday, the market was up around 100 points. The S&P actually closed at an all-time, new high. But other averages are at least 10 or 15% off their all-time highs. My working theory is that the markets are being driven to new highs only because of the ridiculously low interest rates being caused by the furious money printing of the federal reserve and all the other central banks in the world. But like any narcotic, its effects are getting weaker and weaker the more its abused. This is also why I like gold so much. Gold, as opposed to money, is in limited supply.
Okay, so let me get naked now. I’m going to do a portfolio strip tease, stock by stock. Here’s a little explanation of my portfolio page below. On the left is a list of all of the stocks or ETFs that I own. After that, it’s pretty self-explanatory. To get a bottom line picture, look at the bottom line daily and overall totals. The last two stocks, TVIX and UVXY, are ETFs that track market volatility. The more volatile the market, the higher these ETFs go.
WARNING: The author of this blog is a compulsive gambler, and has already lost over a million dollars in the stock market over the last 30 years. Please keep this in mind when making any investment decisions. In other words, you’ve gotta be fucking out of your mind to listen to anything I’m saying.
In a cool café
With cool people
I coughed an uncool cough
I coughed an uncool cough
I coughed an uncool cough
The cool people carried on
Being cool
I coughed an uncool cough
We go around like we’re still in driving school
We turn the wheel
We step on the gas
But we still think we’re 16
With a guy to our right
An adult
Who won’t let us
Do anything too stupid
Who won’t let us
Get hit by the oncoming tractor trailer
Who will have their foot on the brake
Their hand ready to jerk the wheel
Just in time
The neighbor’s boy came in naked
Asking could I have two toffees
I asked why he was naked
He answered
Because I want two toffees
Forgetting my question
Forgetting his nakedness
Morris Eidelsberg 