Good Thing Jews Don't Believe in Hell Part 2

January 14, 1978.  That was the date of my Bar Mitzvah. This is the ceremony where a Jewish boy who has turned 13 joins the Jewish Community as ""Man". Right. All 4' 10 and 85 lbs of me was becoming a "Man"! There is a long service at the synagogue that the young boy reads out of the Torah(Jewish Holy Scriptures) and then afterwards there is a party(only motivation for Jewish boys to go through 5 years of the torturous religious school). Well, my synagogue was really hardcore. Very religious(my family wasn't religious but the synagogue was close to my house and when it came to my family, convenience beats religious faith). Old school members who would sit at Saturday morning services for 5 hours. Hardcore. Well, back to my momentous day and the 2 things that stood out the most, First, if you know me(really if you know  either of my parents or siblings), you know that I have a genetic birth defect. Volumous Maximus. I'm loud. Really loud. Not only that but I had the same voice I have now as a 46 year old man as I did as a child. (yes,I could order over the phone a keg of beer for my kindergarten class!) So, I'm up on the synagogue stage reading the Torah with the Rabbi and the Cantor(Jewish Religious teacher and Synagogue Choir leader) in front of the entire congregation(about 500 people) and there is a microphone so people can hear the young boys speak.  I'm banging away chanting, singing and praying with my parents in the front row beaming with with pride. (the front row was saved for the parents of the Bar Mitzvah boy and the old hardcore synagogue members-usually Jewish men ranging in age from 78-106). All of a sudden I see the Rabbi lean over to the Cantor and say "Shut off his mike, he's killing the first two rows!"
The second thing that I will always remember is that after I was done reading out of the Torah, my parents come up on the stage with me and the Rabbi and present me with my Tallis(Jewish Prayer Shawl that men and now women wear to Jewish services). UH OH!  I had learned verbatum to near perfection all the prayers and my Torah reading portion but totally forgot that I had to do the prayer for receiving my Tallis. I knew that it began with the word "Baruch" and ended with the words "Ba Zti Zti"  So I winged it. After saying "Baruch", I rattled off any Jewish words i knew and ended with "Ba Zti Zti".  Who knows what I even said. Well, The Rabbi knew! As my parents were beaming and looking at me with so much pride, the Rabbi was looking at me with a big scowl on his face probably thinking "That little ....."

You Think They'll Go On A Trip With Us Again?

It's 1991, and my wife and I decided we'd like to go on a trip and also invited my best friend and his wife. Being newlyweds and young, we didn't have a lot of money so we were looking for something really economical. My sister was super nice and offered us a time share she had for a week for $150 for the week.  She's a saint and I love her dearly.  The time share was on the island of ABACO, about 40 miles away from Miami. Well, this trip could only be described as "The trip from Hell".  Due to all the bizarre and messed up things that happened on this trip(bad beach, no restaurants on the island, bad weather, horrible bug problems in the condo, the flight to the island, etc...), I'm only going to write about the 3 things that I think stand out.

#1 THE FLIGHT FROM MIAMI TO ABACO
   We land in Miami from Chicago and have to take another flight for about 35-40 minutes to get to ABACO. Well, the plane.which is an old propeller model, that takes us seats 8, including the pilot. Our luggage had to go on a separate plane. They're asking all of us how much we weigh and that's how we are seated on the plane. My luck, I get to sit right next pilot, who's a pretty angry looking fellow. I actually have controls including a steering wheel right in front of me. I'm thinking, "I've played Nintendo a lot, maybe he'll let me land this baby". Guess again. Before we take off, the pilot looks at me and says "I'm only saying this because you look like the type of guy, DON"T TOUCH A FUCKIN' THING!"


#2 WILL THAT BE THE SHOULDER OR CONCH, SIR?
    The first night we get there, we find a BBQ Place(actually looked like a tool shed with a grill in it) and decide to eat there.  Well, tonight's special is Shoulder( not the best cut of meat) or conch( the fish that lives inside those shells you put up to your ear to hear the ocean). We each pick our choices. The next day at lunch at our condo restaurant, the waiter says, you have a choice of Fried Conch or Shoulder for lunch. Huh? You got to be kidding me? Was this left over food from the Tool Shed BBQ? As it turned out, this was the only food they had on the island. I'm not kidding. Every meal consisted of some form of Conch(Conch Fritters, Grilled Conch, Conch Omelets, etc...sounds like Bubba from Forrest Gump) or Shoulder. My buddy that doesn't eat seafood had shoulder for 7 days straight.( I think his cholesterol went from 175 to 657 in one week!). We were able to go to the store and buy some spaghetti for a couple of meals. Fine dining

#3 THAT WAS AN INTERESTING BOAT RIDE
   The weather for most of the week was pretty bad.  Cloudy and not that warm. We had scheduled a boat ride that was going to take us to some remote beach( hope they have a restaurant on that beach!). It was the 4 of us and another 4 people on a motor boat that resembled a oversized canoe with a lawn mower engine on it. Bad start.  It's  only partly cloudy and we're actually thinking we might get a good weather day. We head off on the 35 minute boat ride. At about the 15 minute mark, it's getting cloudier, actually ominous. Black clouds, much colder and the wind is picking up big time.  The water is getting rough and the ride is getting rougher. The captain of the boat starts passing out black garbage bags for us to put over us as pseudo rain ponchos. Now the rain starts coming(of course!) and it coming hard. The captain is telling us to relax but no one on the boat is buying it. It's now a full out rain storm in the middle of the ocean. My buddy looks at me and says "I'm not sure if I've ever seen one but that sure looks like a funnel cloud" HOLY SHIT! We're all now looking at basically a tornado in the ocean. At that point the captain say "We probably should head back"
YA THINK?!?!?

So, fortunately, my vacations since that trip have been better but I will always remember my trip to ABACO


   

Good Thing Jews Don't Believe In Hell

The year is 2002 and my company has moved its offices from the city into the suburbs, which is great because now I'm about 12 minutes away from my home instead of 45 minutes. There's also a Jewish Center about a block away. This facility  is your standard Jewish Center with classrooms, meeting rooms, a fitness center and a gym. I decide to join so I can workout at lunch time. Well, every Friday, there is a basketball game that goes on at noon. I didn't have any desire to play in the game because most of the guys that played were really bad and uncoordinated(not that I'm getting calls from the NBA but I'm used to playing in better games than this). So one Friday around noon as I'm in the fitness center lifting weights, a guy comes in and says "We really need a player in our basketball game. Will you play?'  I say "No thank you. I'm just going to workout here"  He persists. "If you don't play, we don't have enough for a game. Can you play just one game?"  I said "Fine"  So the gym is constructed in that it has a regulation size basketball court but also 4 baskets on the sides meaning you can turn the big basketball court into 2 smaller basketball courts if there are a lot of people. So we begin to play on the big court. Well, all of a sudden some more people show up. Then a few more people show up. There's probably enough guys to play on 2 courts but we're still going to finish this first game on the big court. Well, there's a guy on the sidelines waiting that is yelling at all of us playing. He's yelling "Stop the game! We need to play on 2 courts! Stop the game!"  I mean this guy was a lunatic. We keep playing and he's still yelling to stop the game. I'm dribbling the ball up the court and this guy walks right into the middle of the court again yelling "Stop the game!!"  Well, I don't know about the other guys playing but I decided that I had listened to enough of this mental patient. I look right at him and yell "SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND SHUT THE F*CK UP!"  He looks at me and turned around to walk back to the side of the gym. The game stops. People are looking at me amazed. I'm thinking "What's the big deal?". This isn't the first time (or probably the last) that I've yelled at someone that is out of hand. One of the guys walks up to me and says "Do you know who that is?" I said "No?"  He says "That's the new Rabbi at B'Nai Tikvah"  Without hesitation, I said "I don't care if he's the  Pope. He can wait his turn like everyone else" 

Alway making friends wherever I go!

You Mean That Wasn't Free?

The year is 1991 and I'm a rookie commercial real estate broker in the Chicago office of Coldwell Banker( Today Coldwell Banker is CB Richard Ellis, the largest commercial real estate company in the U.S.). Commercial real estate was the hot industry for any young guy trying to make his mark in the world. This company did everything first rate. They had the nicest offices, top management, a support staff second to none( each broker got their own assistant) and the financial backing to do anything. Well, the training for their new brokers also fell under the category of 1st class. After a month of being in the office I was sent to Atlanta for 5 days of extensive training  on how Coldwell Banker does business which made them #1.  So I fly down there with a bunch of other rookies from all over the country. There was more testosterone in that training class(including the 2 female brokers in the class) than the locker room of the German Women's Olympic Swim Team. Lot of hot shots. After a 10 hour day of training, we headed back to our hotel room. Not just any hotel room but the Ritz-Carlton of Atlanta. Easily the nicest hotel I ever stayed at which wasn't saying too much because at 23, I hadn't stayed at too many nice hotels. I check in and my roommate is another broker from my Chicago office. Great guy( still friends with him today).Italian guy from New York the same age as me.  This room is super nice. Big bathroom, sofa with coffee table and a little refrigerator filled with drinks, booze, candy and other crap for us to eat.  Both of us had never stayed at a hotel with an Honor Bar  and figured "Hey, it's the Ritz, they really do up the guests bigtime". My roommate and I were making about $800 a month.(not eating really well on that type of income). Well, my buddy and I went at this honor bar like two piranhas who just noticed a really fat guy swimming in the water. I mean by the 2nd night, we cleaned it out. We cleaned it out again by the 4th night. It's the end of the week and we fly back to Chicago with new found knowledge and all the booze, chips and candy we could throw down our throats from that little refrigerated treasure chest. So, Monday morning our branch manager calls us into his office. We sit down and our manager says "So boys, how was last week in Atlanta?" We both said it went well. He then says "How'd you like the Ritz? Did you notice that little refrigrator in the room?"  First thought in my head is "Uh oh! this isn't going to end well" He continues but raising his volume to about a level 9 "You morons! The shit in that mini fridge wasn't free!  You cost the company $450!"  We both were sitting there scared out of our minds and figuring it was our last day at Coldwell Banker. The branch manager then says, "You ever pull a stunt like that on the company dime again and you'll need a long ass shoehorn to get my boot out of your asses! Now get out of my sight!"  We walked out of his office with our tails between our legs and the entire office laughing at us. Today my buddy is a very successful businessman in Los Angeles and I see him once a year at a conference that I go to in San Diego. There isn't one visit that goes by without us bringing that story up and having a good laugh about it.

Gleeks vs. Greeks

It's 1987 and I'm a senior at Ohio State bartending at CHAR-BAR, a popular bar on campus. Great bar. Small, lots of character. Great jukebox. My fraternity house along with a couple others hung out there. Everyone knew each other. The bartenders, waitresses and patrons. The bar was owned by an old guy that was really cheap. By cheap, I mean this guy wouldn't even hire a bouncer. For a college bar! He expected the bartenders to not only make the drinks but also act as security if things got out of hand. There were a few incidents in the 2 years I worked there but nothing too crazy. Except for one incident that I will never forget. It was a Monday night and really quiet at the bar. I hated working Monday nights because it was the one night that was really slow and I knew I wasn't going to making a lot of tip money. It's only me working the bar and one waitress. Well, about 9:30 a group walks in. About 15 guys from a fraternity house who's reputation was that they liked to drink hard and fight harder. I knew most of the guys and felt pretty comfortable around them. About 15 minutes later another group of about 15 guys walk in. I knew them too. They happen to be in the Ohio State Men's Glee Club. Nice guys coming in to unwind after singing practice. You couldn't find two more different groups of guys. Well, one thing led to another and I start to notice some verbal sparring going on between to the two groups. I couldn't make out exactly what was said but I could swear I heard something to the nature of "Tinkerbells" come from the Fraternity guys and "Inbred Neanderthals" come back from the Glee Club. Things are getting tense. The next thing I know it's go time and  a full out brawl breaks out.. There are people throwing punches and chairs at the same time. The one thing that stood out to me was that there was one guy standing right in the middle of the bar and as people ran at him, he took them out with one punch. I mean he was dropping guys like bags of dirt. I look and it’s a guy named Jim, the lead tenor of the Men's Glee Club! He taking out the fraternity fellas like it’s a boxing video game. I jump over the bar and wrap my arms around him. I say "Jim, its Danny you have to calm down!" Jim is in a total frenzy and not knowing it was me, just flug me off him, like a horse swatting a fly off it's behind. I went flying over two tables. In the meantime, the waitress called the police and they came to break it up. I was so shaken up that I think I drank a 1/4 of a bottle of Jack Daniels to calm down and I still had 2 hours left on my shift. After that, all the bartenders told the owner if he didn't hire a bouncer, we'd all quit. He eventually hired a friend of mine who was about 5'7 and probably a bigger wimp than me. Unbelievable! (I'm assuming my friend got the job because he was willing to work for free beer and t shirt). Still, to this day, that night will go down as one of the craziest nights in my life.

Is There A Bathroom On This Bus?

The year is 1997 and I'm in Cincinnati for one of my closest friends bachelor party. My buddy's brother set the entire party up and the first thing we were doing was going to a casino in Rising Sun, Indiana (This place was between Peducah, Kentucky and Hell) and it was supposed to be 45 minutes away. There was a school bus waiting for about 40 of us in front of another buddy's house. Everyone is fired up. Most of the fellas had been drinking for about an hour before this bus arrived. Every man boarding the bus had a beer in their hand with another 6 cases of beer being loaded on.  Off we go.  The bus ride is loud and raucous as to be expected. We're knocking down the beers at a feverish pace. We hit the 45 minute mark and no casino in site. The bus driver tells us another 25 minutes. Yeesh!! Oh well, just more drinking on the bus. Well, about 10 more minutes go by and the bus is dead silent. I mean you could hear a pin drop. Was there a mute button on this party? Did something happen that caused this silence? Yes, something did happen. Everybody's bladder was maxed out. We all had to go to the bathroom. BADLY!!!!!  Looking around you could see anguish on everyone's face. Even my one buddy who could basically drink a lake without it affecting him, was leaning against the bus window in major pain. At one point, I was thinking "If we don't get to this damn casino soon, there's going to be a massive accident on the inside of this bus and someone's not getting their security deposit back!"  Finally the bus pulls into the casino and pulls up curbside by the main entrance. A woman from the casino boards the bus and starts to tell us about the amenities of the casino. Are you kidding me? We have 35 men that are in agony, 5 that have passed out from the pain and this woman is telling us what kind of cheese there is on the bad buffet! All of a sudden our buddy's brother who was in charge of this party gets up and say "SHIT LADY, I GOTTA PEE LIKE RACEHORSE. GET OUT OF MY FUCKIN' WAY!"  He all but shoves her into a nearby seat and runs off the bus. The rest of us follow his lead and get off the bus as fast as we can.  We all survived and had a great time but realize next time we either step up and get a bus with a bathroom or find a casino that is a hell of a lot closer!

Please Secure All Belongings

In today's world of air travel there are so many restrictions on what you can bring on a plane. The size of carry on bag you can bring on the plane, how many carry on bags you can bring on the plane and how many personal items you can bring on a plane.  Soon we'll all need to take a seminar on the proper way to deal with carry on bags on airplanes. This posting is on air travel of mine that happened well before all of these restrictions.  The year is 1993 and I'm a multi line sales rep in the sporting goods industry. I'm representing 5 different sporting good lines and they each have a national sales meeting during the year. This particular sales meeting was being held in San Diego. Meeting went well and I'm on my way back to Chicago. I'm on a flight with my entire Sales Rep Agency which include myself, our rep from Ohio, our rep from Kentucky, our rep from Michigan and the boss of our agency from Michigan. Now the boss of our agency was a real piece of work.  He's about 6'4", loud and extremely fond of himself. The man has been in the sporting goods industry for about 20 years. He has been really successful or should I say his sales reps have made him very successful. This guy never worked. To his credit, he hired great sales reps who busted their humps to be one of the top sales agencies in the country. We made him a lot of money and he took all the credit. On this plane flight as always he was flying 1st Class and we had to fly coach. Not a big deal since we all liked each other and it gave us time to catch up since most of the year we didn't see each other. For whatever reason, the bossman's return flight got screwed up and he had to fly coach with the other peasants. The 4 of us are sitting together having a good time and the boss is sitting on the aisle seat in the row in front of us. Right across from him in the opposite aisle seat is an Asian man. The reason I bring up the fact that the man sitting next to him was Asian was because my boss was also a racist. Not a huge, hood wearing/cross burning racist but none the less a racist. If I had a $1 for every crack he made about me being Jewish, I could have flown 1st class too. Its a long flight and I can tell the bossman is thoroughly irritated with his seat assignment.  We finally land in Chicago and as the plane is coming to a stop the flight attendant says "Please be careful because items may have shifted in the overhead bins"  What happened next I couldn't have scripted better for our entertainment. The Asian fellow gets ups quickly and opens the overhead bin right above my boss. As the bin opens, the Asian man's metal briefcase falls out directly on the bossman's head. Unbelievable!  What made it extremely entertaining for all of us was:

1) The briefcase was one of those super hard silver metal ones, the kind you always see in the movies that James Bond Spy types have.  It was basically an anchor shaped like a briefcase.


 2) Not only did it hit him directly on the top of his head but the briefcase fell on an angle and bossman got nailed by a corner of the briefcase. OUCH!!!!

3) The combination of the Asian man apologizing to the bossman and the pain/irritation of the bossman was priceless.

It took everything for all of us not to just bust out laughing.  Believe me it was hard and when the bossman was out of our site, we all but had to replace our underwear we were laughing so hard.

So an on going theme of a lot of my postings is "What goes around comes around" but I think in this case "What goes up must come down" is more fitting!