Bonehead

NEW YEARS WITH CHRISTINE CLARKE

2011-12-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

This is the time of year when most of us reflect on the past and look forward to the future.

Personally, I can tell you there'll be no reflecting here. 2011 was an unmitigated disaster. From a societal and world view - it was terrible. From a personal perspective it absolutely sucked. I hope that some good things came your way this year, and if they didn't - fear not. There's always next year.

My wife tells me all the time to be happy and count my blessings. At it's core of course she's right. However, my ego, pride and OCD make it difficult to count past very few. She's one I can count on though. Typically I use a post at this time to list my favorite Chrissy Quotes from the past year. I'm fairly certain that there were plenty on 2011 as well, I was just too stupid or stoned through most of the year to write them down, let alone formulate them into some sort of coherent order.

Nope - instead, I'll just post some of her original music from the late 1990's. Life was very different then for both of us. Although we didn't actually meet until after she recorded these, I can hear them anytime and feel a connection to that time, and I'm thankful that we're connected now, and for however much longer we have days to complain about how shitty everything is.

Here's four for now - more to follow soon. Happy fucking 2012.

TRAMPOLINES IN THE WIND

2011-12-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

I was thinking recently about tornadoes. While deep in thought it occurred to me that you see in inordinate amount of trampolines tossed about whenever you see photos or videos of areas damaged by the effects of a twister.

This is essentially nothing more than a compilation of photos of obliterated trampolines following a tornado. Odd, perhaps. Yet, strangely compelling.

THE MISPLACED SUPPORT OF PENN STATE

2011-11-12T00:43:00.000-05:00

In the wake of this most heinous of stories, I very much wanted to vent my disgust at what's gone on this past week at Penn State University, but sometimes words cannot convey sentiments properly, and decided to hold back.

How sick has our society become?

That Jerry Sandusky was allowed to continue raping children while the hierarchy of the University did everything in their power to cover up the fact that they knew he was doing this, is unprecedented in it's depravity.

That assistant coach Mike Maqueary actually witnessed Sandusky raping a ten year old in 2002, and did not physically intervene and stop the attack is beyond my comprehension. The only conclusion I can draw from what could have possibly stopped him from helping the victim is that perhaps Maqueary was attacked or molested by the much older Sandusky when he was a boy. Maqueary grew up in the same neighborhood where Sandusky lived with his family.

That upon hearing the news that legendary coach Joe Paterno was fired, thousands of Penn State students came out in his support. This makes me so sad in that so many of these kids didn't take the time to think for a moment that by doing nothing - Paterno allowed more children's lives to be ruined. Putting the Penn State Football program ahead of children's lives. This is what these kids were rallying for.

Our priorities in this nation are so far beyond fucked up, that you can only sit and stare at the stories in stunned disbelief. I fear however, when the real facts start coming out about the scope and depth of this story, we'll soon learn new heights to where our disbelief can climb.

I hope this clip will forever embarrass those misguided souls who came to the defense and support of the enabling leader of Penn State Football; Joe Paterno, before checking their priorities and learning the facts.

But no-one fucking does that anymore do they?

WATCH THIS

2011-11-06T22:05:00.000-05:00

MY SECOND FAVORITE WARREN...WARREN BUFFETT

2011-10-28T21:15:00.003-04:00

By now you've seen this photo circulating along with the latest bit of common sense offered by Warren Buffett. I'm happy to see that people are sharing his recent comments (see below) and that maybe, just maybe...there's a few more people waking up to the rampant corruption that makes up the political system driving this nation rapidly into oblivion.

A solution offered forward by the most successful investor this Country has ever known, seems to be filled with the sort of common sense most of our elected officials would never consider. It's this sort of thinking that can only be forced upon those who choose to serve the greater good. Only a massive uprising by those of us with a stifled voice can ever invoke real change.

Wouldn't it be great if everyone could be held accountable to the same standards.

This was posted by Gene Valley:

Warren Buffett, "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system,and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor,not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term's), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on.

My favorite Warren....

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

2011-10-23T15:12:00.000-04:00

'NUFF SAID.

I don't know about you - but NO-ONE I know is in the 1%. And for those misguided miscreants who actually think our current system works, you need to look past the soundbites. Reading and learning the facts are often quite enlightening when you make the effort.

DEATH OF AN EVIL TYRANT

2011-10-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

This is a very rare Bonehead Repost, originally posted almost two years ago - but with the killing today of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya - I wanted to once again pay homage to the memory of my friend Sean who was killed aboard Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland on December 21, 1988. A terrorist act ordered by Gadhafi.

I like to think that in the end, everyone gets theirs...and I'm glad that this evil tyrant was taken out. Hopefully painfully.

ANOTHER BONEHEAD BACKSTORY!

Before I got into radio, like most young people I had a few different jobs. I drove a truck, worked in a retail store warehouse, sold stolen goods, but primarily my work days were spent in restaurants. If you’ve previously visited my humble blog I understand that you feel a little “dirty” for coming back but you also then already know that I’ve spent a few years working beneath the Golden Arches.

This is not a McDonald’s story however, and it’s written in tribute to a friend. It’s a long one, but I hope you’ll stick with it to the end.

I spent about a year working at a Pizza Stop restaurant in East Northport. It was a converted Pizza Hut location. Pizza Hut had left the Long Island market in the early 80’s and a few of the restaurants were leased to local operators who tried to make a go of it. Most all of them failed miserably, and Pizza Stop was no different, Pizza Hut eventually returned in the later half of the decade.

Pizza Stop made typical New York style pizza and your typical Italian fare that was a small step above fast food. As it was 1981, there was the obligatory salad bar , and, unlike Pizza Hut, a fully stocked bar. It was owned by a small restaurant speculator who had a bunch of similar places throughout the region. Our location was nothing more than a tax shelter as the guy wanted the business to lose money for the tax advantages . What better way to do that than to put a handful of 19 and 20 year olds in charge of the place and then stock it with beer and liquor. Yes, this was most definitely the perfect job for Bonehead.

For a few months we did very well, as the introductory deal featured large cheese pies for $3.95, cheap even for 1981. Of course, the food cost alone averaged about $3.50 for an eat-in pizza, and $3.80 for a take-out (the boxes were about thirty cents each) so it was a loss leader, the idea being to get the customers in, sell them a cheap pizza and over-charge them for a mixed drink, cheap wine or a draft beer.

Seems like a reasonable business plan, however I refer you once again to who was running the place. We had a small staff, some waitresses and cooks, and four managers – Vic, Scott, Siobhan and me. Big Vic found a better job after a few months and then it was the three of us, Scott being the senior citizen at 21 years old. After Vic left, we got a quick phone call from the owner who said we needed to do away with the $3.95 pie and price it to a more typical $7.99 or so. That was the last time we heard from the big boss for six months.

Siobhan’s brother Sean was going to college in Ireland, and he came home for the summer. He was Irish, and a big time rugby player , so naturally, he was insane, also naturally, we hired him to help out for a few months.

If memory serves me right, it was probably only five months or so that he worked with us – but no matter how long, I can tell you that every day was filled with insanity and non-stop laughter. Once we raised the price of the pizza to $7.99 the restaurant lost its competitive edge and was simply priced the same as everyone else. Because the building was a stand-alone and not conveniently located in one of the three dozen strip malls in the area, we lost pretty much all of our business. Oh sure, occasionally the wayward traveler or local streetwalker would come in for a slice and a beer, but for the most part, it was just the workers, a manager or two, and the bar.

It got a little nutty.

We seriously tried to make a go of it, for awhile anyway. We watched our ordering, labor costs, did some local area marketing, but the business just went away. There was business on Fridays and Saturdays – at least enough to keep a staff occupied for most of their shift, it was the other five days of the week that we might see three or four customers total from open (noon) till close (11pm).

The food wasn’t bad we actually made all of the pizza dough fresh every day. We had a huge Hobart mixer that was running daily within five minutes of the first arriving employee. Problem was, the dough could only hold for two days in the refrigerators, so after that it had to be discarded. Such a waste. One day Sean apparently grew tired of having to drag the 60 or so pounds of solidifying pizza dough out to the dumpster, so he just tossed it into the office. The next day – he did the same thing. The next after that, again.

So, now it’s Thursday, my turn to open so I have to drag my stupid hung-over ass into the restaurant in the pre-noon daylight. Pulling in I notice Sean’s car in the parking lot. Assuming he slept there, since the last time I had seen him on Wednesday evening he was in the waitress station filling up one of those clear plastic pitchers with beer and pouring it over his head . He did this several times and seemed to be having a good time so I chose not to ask him about it. Initially my thoughts assume that I’ll have to wake him up and mop up a boatload of stale beer off the floor so my head starts to pound a little bit louder.

Fumbling with my keys I finally get into the back door and walk in to find Sean and Scott dancing and jumping around the one chair in the office. Seems they spent all night forming nearly 200 pounds of spent pizza dough into a human-like form. They even dressed the fucking thing in a flannel shirt, someone’s jeans and a pair of old shoes Vic left behind. The dough hands had five dough fingers, there was a handsome dough nose and hair made from left over linguine. It wore a hat from the lost and now never to be found box, and sported pimento stuffed olives for a glaring set of eyes. Seems Pizza Stop had a new manager – dough boy was in charge!

Yes, they had spent the entire night at the place – drinking beer, cheap shit wine and whatever concoctions they could create from the remaining booze at the bar, and they made a man, a dough man who could crush that pussy-ass Pillsbury dough boy between his fingers. As I recall we all forgot to even unlock the doors to the place that day – instead spending it laughing our asses off while trying to make enough dough for a dough lady.

Every day was a party – but truth is we were all kids with a little bit of a conscience. Sure we were drinking the good booze – but we cut a deal with the liquor store up the road for pizzas in exchange for a few bottles of cheap whiskey, vodka, rum and gin. We’d drink the good name brand stuff, make a few pizzas for the guys at the liquor store and replace the Johnny Walker with local hooch. We were young and figured no-one would notice.

Sean and Siobhan, living right up the street also had a conscience, and big hearts. We were all stupid kids who were bored and running a restaurant with no customers – so there were many nights that summer when they simply brought employees home (including me) with them to sleep off the over consumption, lest they drive home drunk. None of us realized the gesture being so magnanimous at the time – but as much as they liked to party and run the fun as they did, they were wise enough to open their doors to others without so much as a second thought.

Sean went back with his cousin Paddy to school in September of that year. Things around the Pizza Stop were pretty quiet, most of the other crew had quit since there was so little work, it was really rather boring, and the wait staff couldn’t make any tips if there weren’t any customers.

One Friday night, I think it was in early November the owner called out of the blue. Said we should turn off the beer taps and stop selling liquor immediately, he was coming out from the city and was going to pick up all the booze, wine and beer. Obviously, at the time I had no idea why this was happening, as I matured it became pretty clear – the liquor license lapsed and he had to get all of the booze out of the place to avoid a hefty fine should the state liquor authority make a surprise visit.

This wouldn’t seem like so big of a deal until you realize we had rung about eighty dollars in bar sales over the past two months and had consumed enough to make Andre the Giant pass out. Now what?

I credit this crisis as the moment I learned to become a salesperson. I tore out of the restaurant, ran up the street and negotiated a deal with our buddies at the liquor store that saved all of our drunken asses. Sure, we paid for it in cash, weed and dates with our sisters, but they gave us some of the booze we needed to avoid certain felony charges.

By the time the owner arrived with a small panel truck – we had refilled the Jack Daniels bottles with a mixture of ginger ale and Pepsi, replaced most of the top shelf Vodka with Georgi and the well vodka with a water and vinegar mixture. Gin for the most part was water with a little perfume and cologne, while the Tequila was refilled with beer and lime juice. There was some Dewar’s in the Johnny Walker Black bottles and some Robitussen in the Yaegermeister bottles.

He took the pseudo booze and a couple of kegs of beer, leaving the ugly cheap Opici wine gallon bottles behind because well, nobody really wanted those. We all took a deep sigh of relief figuring that unless he we going to serve that shit at a party or drink it himself, we were off the hook.

A couple of weeks later, Sean came back to Long Island as the school semester was over. He came down to the restaurant one slow Wednesday afternoon along with a case of Guinness Stout. The real stuff , in the bottle with the yellow label and the residue. This of course led to more insanity.

Somehow we got to talking about a certain scene in the movie Animal House – you know the one; “Food Fight ”! We locked the doors and set about running amuck in the place. Scott, Siobhan, Sean and I grabbing squeeze bottles filled with Olive Oil, we also took aim with old dough, flour, yeast, pepperocini, rigatoni, you name it we threw it. At each other and all over the restaurant. It lasted for two hours and was exhausting. It also was about the longest and hardest I’ve laughed in my entire life. Literally, we did this from about noon till 2pm, when the phone rang.

Yup, like a sign from the asshole that came up with the Murphy’s Law theory, it was the owner once again. We were done, he asked us to lock the doors, not to make the daily bank deposit, and hang for a little while as he was coming to pick up the cash and give us a little check to help us manage through the holidays as unemployed alcoholics. He’d be there in about an hour or so.

Oops. Talk about a buzz kill.

The news sobered all of us up pretty quickly. Not Sean though, he was just visiting now, so he cracked the last Guinness from the case. The restaurant was a total disaster, there was wet parmegian cheese dripping from the Asteroids video game for chrissakes. We were also all soaked and caked with flour, oil and all sorts of other condiments and sundries.

I remember shouting “Red Light” in reference to an obscure Flintstones episode in which Fred had to get the house cleaned up before Wilma got home. The four of us tore around that restaurant with brooms, mops, towels, cleaner and trash bags like our lives depended on it. Remember, Sean was a rugby player and had superhuman stamina. This guy ran around with a bottle of Guinness in one hand and a mop in the other and managed to make an area that was dripping with Marinara sauce sparkle faster than previously thought humanly possible.

Sure enough, it was around 4:30 and the owner showed up. We managed to make the place presentable, even changing our shirts to hide the evidence of battle. He took his cash, gave us each a check for a couple of hundred bucks and an address to mail the keys to. We were done. Pizza Stop was history.

Like you do when you’re twenty years old – you go your separate ways.

On December 21, 1988 all 289 passengers and crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 plus 11 innocent residents on the ground were killed when it exploded over Lockerbie Scotland. The tragedy was spearheaded by Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrah.

Killed on that flight were John Mulroy – director of international communications for the Associated Press, his son Sean Mulroy and Sean’s new wife Ingrid. Also killed were John’s sister Bridget and her husband and son. All had been returning to East Northport for a holiday family reunion.

The Scottish government released the heartless piece of shit al-Megrah in August of this year on “compassionate grounds” due to the fact he was dying from cancer.

Compassionate grounds? Seriously?

Appalling!!!

I can only hope that his slow death from cancer is nothing less than excruciatingly painful. Not enough justice for my long ago friend Siobhan, her mom and bother who every year have to watch the news and be reminded of the senseless act that stole so much from them.

Die slow al-Megrah. In the name of nothing.

R.I.P. my wonderful old friend Sean.