BarrieBergman

In the Hood

I have never liked clothes with hoods.  I have several sweatshirts, raincoats, and jackets with hoods, but I find them cumbersome, and they push my hair out of place.  I don’t have that much hair, so it’s very important to me that it be coiffed perfectly. 

I never expected to be at the front of a fashion movement pro or con.  In the last week hoodies have captured the national attention because of the terrible murder in Florida of a young man wearing a hood.

Face covering has always been controversial in our country (i.e. KKK).  The Unabomber didn’t help things, and lately gangs have adopted the look.  All this made me glad I didn’t adopt the style, since I don’t want to get shot.

Dress as evidence of belief is as old as man, but dress codes are pretty stupid.  I have been turned away at places because I was wearing shorts, non-collared shirts, jeans, colored shirts, and no tie.  I try to be a good person, but I just can’t see the point of all this. 

Neckties were originally pieces of cloth used as a gravy sop. Material was expensive, and only the affluent could afford cloth.  How our society could make the leap from a gravy-soaked piece of material to requiring a tie, and adding some significance to it, totally escapes me. 

It’s important for of us to step outside our belief systems, when evaluating other human beings.  People are not their clothing, even though I am one bad dude, when I wear Armani.

 

We’ll Get Rich a Few Days Later

I read recently that rich people are more likely to cheat at stop signs by jumping the queue than people of modest means.  The wealthy are also more likely to fudge on taxes, and in other places, than their poorer compatriots.   The theory is that the rich are empowered and feel more entitled than those of modest means.

Before you poor schlubs out there start to feel superior, you’ve got to realize that as soon as you get wealthy, you expect the same entitlements as your formerly rich betters - so much for the nobility of the poor.  As I have often mentioned, I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich, but rich beats the crap out of poor.  However, that is a topic for another day.

Ethics are an interesting matter.  When I first decided to write a book, my title was going to be We’ll Get Rich a Few Days Later, which referred to having a strong ethical base in business.  Instead, I named my book Nice Guys Finish First, because my publicist talked me into it.

I still like the first title, although the second title took me to great riches and fame.  In a time of Rush Limbaugh and mass cheating in politics and sports, doing the right thing is an American value we should return to.

In the same article I alluded to, it was discovered that more affluent people fudged on change.  They were much less likely to return money, if a cashier gave them too much change on a cash purchase.  My wife Arlene and I have given money back many times.  About half the time the person is reluctant to take the money and acknowledge they made an error.  Some times you can’t do the right thing even if you want to.

Nice Guys Finish First:  amazon.com
Website:  barriebergman.com
Blog:  http://barriebergman.typepad.com/barriebergman/   

The Name Game

I love celebrity baby names.  It’s not enough to be screwed up themselves, celebrities need to screw up their kids with wacko names.  I know what it’s like to have a name that no one ever spells right.  My father decided to spell Barrie with an “ie” and that was the last time anybody ever spelled it right.  This is the reason I’m so weird today.

Mariah Carey named her baby Monroe, which I suppose is after the Doctrine.  She’s such a history buff.  Gwyneth Paltrow named her kid Apple, but that’s okay because she’s perfect.

Ethan Hawke called his Indiana because David Letterman is from there or maybe because the ugliest city we ever had a store in was Evansville.  Victoria and David Beckham have Harper, whose sexual orientation is unclear.

Viola Davis has Genesis, doubtless named for the band.  Alicia Silverstone has Bear Blu, which totally escapes me, and Mike Tyson has named his progeny Morocco, so he can be called “The Rockin’ Moroccan.”  Natalie Portman’s little dancer is Aleph, while Kevin James’s son is Kannon, what a little firecracker.

January Jones has Xander, a totally mad name.  Jewell calls her child Kase, which I believe is a travel bag.  Jessica Alba’s girl is Haven, which I suppose left out an “e,” but it could be a place to hide.

All this is just ammunition for my oft-held belief that people should be licensed to have children.  To use kids to encourage one’s own ego is so unfair.  I’m thinking of changing my name to Alvin.

Musings

I kinda like Mitt Romney.  He’s handsome, prolific (lots of kids), and he’s a good businessman.  He jumps around on issues, but then don’t most politicians.

I’m probably not his target demographic, since I’m a Democrat, and I’m not going to vote for him.  But among the respective Republican candidates, he’s an easy choice.  Thus, I’m sick of Romney getting pilloried for being a good business person.

If more people in government had a clue about how to make money (i.e. buy low, sell high) we might be able to finance our debt without running a series of fund raisers.  Perhaps, if we could get some of the same greedy bastards that run Wall Street to run the government, we would do better – Oh wait – we tried that under Bush, and look how it turned out.
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A fan at a hockey game was recently fined $200 for throwing a banana at a black player.  Police said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with a hate crime.  What do you think it was, a dislike crime?  Later in the game another fan threw a bagel at a Jewish player, but he wasn’t charged because there was no cream cheese or lox.  Yeah . . . I’m just kidding about the bagel.

It’s OK for hockey players to beat the crap out of each other, just don’t throw stuff on the ice, except in Detroit, where they throw octopi for some unfathomable reason.

High Times on Stage and Off

Continuing last week’s theme of Arlene and Barrie go to rock and roll shows . . .

We once went to a show with James Brown, where he peeled off 2 one hundred dollar bills from a huge wad of money.  He handed the cash to the guy at the door and said, “Let my friends in.”  I was backstage one night talking to Sam Cooke, and I happened to mention that my girlfriend was in the audience.    Sam said that he wanted to meet her.  So he and I went into the small balcony, where he could meet Arlene.  He sat with us and talked for a long time.  To an awestruck kid, it doesn’t get any better than these experiences.

Artists say the damnedest things on stage.  Wayne Newton says, “You’re the greatest audience I’ve ever had,” every night.  Do not ask how I know this or whether I ever saw Wayne Newton live.  Once you get by the usual clichés of, “Hey Altoona, are you having fun?” or “We’re gonna party all night long,” some artists reveal themselves by what they say. Tony Bennett, admittedly long in the tooth, said, “What a night” about ten times.  Linda Ronstadt complained about how cold it was in two different concerts over a ten-year period.  Get a sweater, bitch!  Miles Davis played with his back to the crowd and never said a word.

Katy Perry, playing at home in Santa Barbara, was excited and made the evening very personal with wonderful local memories.  James Taylor sang, In My Mind I’m going to Carolina in California, and transported me home to NC without a plane.  Mary Wells, having throat trouble that eventually derailed her career, came on stage and just waved, showing she was at the concert.

The list of remarkable things go on and on, but my favorite was a middle level country singer performing in Dorton Arena, a converted agricultural building at the NC State Fair, who said in perfect sincerity as he ended his act, “Raleigh, I’ll never forget you.”

Now on Our Stage

Over the years I’ve seen some of the greatest entertainers.  My father started to take me to see great talent, when I was a little kid. Arlene, my wife, and I continued the practice.

My father took me to see such varied performers as Nat King Cole, Marilyn Monroe, and Gene Autry.  We saw Bob Hope, Perry Como, and Spike Jones.  We also saw Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and a host of other people.

Arlene and I have seen everyone from Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, James Brown, and Tina Turner, when she was still with Ike.    Throw in Ray Charles, Led Zepplin, Sam Cooke, and literally thousands of others, and I’ve had a good look at the entertainers of the last part of the 20th century.  Looking back on all these shows, I’ve seen and heard some amazing things on stage. 

I even got to be on stage a few times.  Alabama once gave me an award in front of 16,000 people, and our family got to sit on stage during an Eagles concert.  The energy that comes toward the stage from that many people is a pretty heady experience) and is responsible for some incredible stuff that I’ve heard performers say and do.

I saw Elton John get hit by something someone in the audience threw at him.  He went down like a brick, out cold.  He came back later and finished the concert with a big bandage on his head.  One night I was in the first row for a Zepplin concert, and I didn’t stand up, when Robert Plant told the audience to stand.  He started yelling obscenities at me.  I saw Charlie Rich, the country singer, get so drunk on stage that he fell off of his piano stool.  I watched Warren Zevon swig an entire fifth of vodka out of the bottle, while on stage.  When we took a picture after his set, I had to hold him up, because he couldn’t stand.

I met Jimmy Reed, the great blues singer, laid out on a table, because he was so drunk he was too drunk to stand.  Arlene and I walked in on Jackie Wilson, when he was naked, which was thrilling for all of us.  I’ve got a bunch more.
To be continued next week . . .

Blue Monday

I’m easily pissed off.  Child abuse pisses me off.  Cheating in college athletics pisses me off.  All politicians piss me off.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Black Friday pisses me off.

No, I’m not unhappy about consumers running willy-nilly spending money; I just don’t like the term.  Some fool analyst on Wall Street came up with the name because supposedly the day after Thanksgiving is the day retailer’s P&L statements go from red to black.  This is only true occasionally, and it differs widely from industry to industry and year to year.

I could understand if we called this day “Green Friday” because it’s certainly the day money shows up, but co-opting the name of the day that the stock market crashed in 1929 is like somebody chewing gum loudly.  I can’t stand that either.

Now that all that is cleared up, we can also delete Cyber Monday too.  Any retailer knows the last full Saturday before Christmas is the biggest shopping day of the year, because people procrastinate as long as they can before coming out to shop.  The only reason the last shopping day before Christmas is not the biggest day is because most stores close at 6:00 p.m. that day.

Last week amid the turkey and football, Roger Federer proved once again that older gentlemen can still play tennis by winning the year-end tournament.  Black Friday my ass.

Suggestions for a New World Order

I’ve been watching the child abuse scandal at Penn State with horror.  Assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was allegedly sexually molesting children, and it was covered up by the athletic department and by school administrators.  Joe Paterno, the iconic football coach, knew about it, but told only the athletic director, not the police.

It’s obvious that this was covered up to protect the football program, i.e. money.  College athletic programs are so out of control that they are virtually being run as private fiefdoms, purely for money, having nothing to do with education. Every school’s claim, that it’s all for the student athletes, is a bunch of crap.

This particular situation also brings up the issue of age.  Is an 83 year old too old to coach one of these large programs?  I think Paterno is a good guy, who is long past his expiration date.  He doesn’t have the energy to control this lunacy.

This terrible story has a backdrop of the unusual insanity that goes on in our world.  After a great amount of study, I have this solution for a complicated problem: 
    1.    Frank McCourt has to sell the Dodgers.  He’ll be out of a job.  Make Frank McCourt the commissioner of college football, sort of the head of greed, since he’s the greediest bastard I know.
    2.    Let Herman Cain be the football coach at Penn State.  There are no women on the football team,  so he can’t get into any trouble.
    3.    Nominate Joe Paterno for President.  He’s a kindly old man, he looks presidential, and I don’t think he’ll bother anybody.

What Nature Doesn’t Do to Us Will Be Done by Our Fellow Man

The Kardashian marriage ends after 73 days.  An Amish breakaway cult attacks normal Amish people then cuts their beards and hair.  The Mayan calendar ends in late 2012.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Frank McCourt buys the Dodgers.  Frank McCourt has to sell the Dodgers.  Demi and Ashton are having marital trouble.  Herman Cain likes women, too much.

Why is our world going to hell in a hand basket?  Is it global warming?  Is it Wall Street?  Is it Greece, which apparently has caused all the financial ills in the world for the last 2,000 years?   (I told them not to hold the Olympics.)

Is our society obsessed with non-consequential matters like the Kardashians, or is it the media that creates these vacuums that suck our attention like a vortex?  Do we read US Weekly or watch TMZ because we’re flawed, or would Moses have done the same thing, if he’d had an iPad?

I think we’re just evolving or devolving.  And who knows where a fascination with the famous or infamous goes?  The world has been coming to an end since I was born, and we’re still here.  The Kingston Trio had a song in the 50’s, “They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain . . .”

I’m going to spend less time concentrating on celebrities who mean nothing to our world and more in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.  Oh!  I have to stop now.  I just got an alert from The Huffington Post.

We are the McCourts - We are the Children

Our long national nightmare is over.  Jamie and Frank McCourt have settled their two-year divorce fight.  Jamie got $130 million, and Frank got the Dodgers.  The team, however, is deprived of Jamie’s leadership and business acumen.  She was the CEO and one of the great baseball minds of our time.

The lawyers got $20 million, and Manny Ramirez retired.  So I guess the world is back on an even keel.  I am concerned about Jamie.  If you figure a 7% net after tax return on her money, she has just over $9 million to live on annually.  This doesn’t touch her pedicure bill.  If she has to start dipping into the principle, she may have to cut back from a Rolls to a Bentley.

The McCourts are representative of what is wrong with the vacuousness of Southern California.  Also representative of this are the Los Angeles clubs that cater to high rollers called Whales.  Celebrities and rich folk spend between $20,000 and $100,000 a night for “bottle service.”  They do this to show the rest of the world that they can.  In a time of national financial distress, there must be better ways to spend money than this kind of conspicuous consumption.  Having a naked girl on a swing deliver a large bottle of Dom Pérignon for big money, that could be used to fund education, seems like a hell of a waste.

It’s easy to judge, but this makes me want to puke.  I’m going to pull out a bottle of first growth Bordeaux this evening and forget my troubles.