It’s Matzo Time Again

For those of you completely out of touch with the religious world this week probably means nothing special, except perhaps the transition from winter to spring. Everyone else is either busy dying eggs, buying chunks of chocolate in the shapes of rabbits, or crunching on a piece of matzo.  Again, for the unenlightened, the first two are part of the Christian tradition and the latter is a Jewish delicacy. Historically speaking the confluence of these two holidays is actually where these two great religions separated.

Apparently, Jesus, who was raised by Jewish parents, had what has become known as The Last Supper at a Seder, a special meal where Jews recall how Moses confronted Pharaoh and caused the Red Sea to split apart, so he could take them out on the desert for forty years and get the ten commandments.   Meanwhile, Jesus was hung on a cross, miraculously rose from the dead, and became the savior of a whole new religion, Christianity. Over the next 2,000 years Christianity grew so rapidly it dwarfs Judaism. Some religious theorists suspect it might be the choice of chocolate bunnies over the unsweetened flatbread, known as matzo, that accounts for this phenomenon.

The President gave his approval to the matzo at this seder.

Being an ecumenical household Debbie placed the basket with colorful shredded paper made to look like grass with dozens of jellybeans resembling tiny multi-hued eggs on the dining room table before attending Palm Sunday mass. By Monday, the matzo took over. Besides putting a large matzo ball in the middle of my tzimmes, a traditional dish blending vegetables and sweet dried fruit, the smell of my apple matzo kugel merged with the aroma of matzo ball soup. The house radiated with the essence of matzo before our first guest arrived and the requisite three-matzo plate was placed in the center of the Seder table replacing the aforementioned basket.

A frog left from one of the 10 plagues sat down on our matzo plate.

As everyone gathered around the table to listen to me read from the Haggadah, the booklet from which the story of the exodus is read, my 85-year-old mother asked if we had a new set. I reminded her that she had provided us with this new set of Haggadahs last year. Then, everyone took note they were made by Maxwell House. It was noted that the previous set were also courtesy of Maxwell House. I recalled reading from some Haggadahs produced by Chase & Sanborn when I was growing up, but nobody knew why either coffee company made these booklets. No coffee was had at our Seder, or at any other Seder as far as I know.

If they were to ask me, and of course they never will, it would make more sense for Manischewitz, Yehuda, or whatever other matzo bakers there are out there to produce the storybook that promotes their product. Oh well, I’ll just crunch another matzo and keep my mouth shut.  

Sleep! What’s All the Fuss?

Thank heaven for earplugs...
you can scream all you want I'm
not getting up.

Sleep is such a popular subject there is a journal called SLEEP produced by Associated Professional Sleep Societies, and sponsored by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. Now, that’s a lot of sleepy people. Of course if you are reading this in your sleep you might not get the meaning of the last sentence, because usually sleep readers don’t remember what they read, and even if they do they tend to lose their sense of humor while asleep.

If you are like most people you have had trouble sleeping. While problems tend to increase as people get older, difficulty sleeping can strike at any age. At my yoga class a couple of new parents claim they slept just fine until they brought home their baby. Apparently, babies, who sleep a disproportionately large number of hours in a day, don’t always choose those hours wisely.  According to these young parents, and if memory serves me, a newborn may choose to wake from one to twenty times during a night and remain awake from a few minutes to several hours. Honestly, I don’t understand their tenacity in disrupting the sleep of others in the household, but they do.

Yes, this is just like at home.

Given this previous scenario one might think once children have grown older and left the proverbial nest their parents would sleep better. Ironically, sleep dysfunction among these weary individuals has actually been known to increase. Fortunately, without having to take children to the orthodontist, saxophone lessons, band concerts and friends homes after a long day at work, an older adult has time to see one of those sleep professionals mentioned at the start of this post.

About 18 months ago my physician sent me for an overnight visit at the nearby sleep disorder clinic. An eager technician stuck a dozen tabs to my hair and another dozen around my face. To these tabs she attached a bunch of wires that converged into a receptacle that plugged into a machine that conveyed electrical impulses to a bunch of monitors in a control center. Once I was sufficiently uncomfortable she asked me to lay in a bed in a room a step above the one at the local Motel 6 and go to sleep. A short time after she turned off the lights and closed the door her voice came over a loudspeaker in the room saying if I needed anything, like to use the bathroom, I just needed to call her name and she would unplug me so I could walk to the toilet and do my business. Looking up to the ceiling I could see the red light of the infrared camera recording my every move. It would be hard to imagine anything that could of further enhanced this simulation of my natural sleep environment.

Wow! This is way cool!

Neither I, nor my wife who took the same test a year later, qualified for the wonderful machine known as a CPAP. We both have only mild sleep apnea, not enough to require the ventilation therapy provided by the Continuous Positive Air Pressure mask. The only recommendation was not to sleep in the supine position. In other words, stay off my back. This makes particular sense when my insomnia kicks in full force and the only comfortable position is on my back. Then, I have to wonder if I remain there will I stop breathing during my sleep, and if so what will be the consequences. Worrying about the possibilities clogs my mind and inhibits sleep. Amazingly, I feel alert the next day…so, what’s all the fuss?    

O.C. Housewives Return to California

Last week a dear friend from Wisconsin sent me an article about just how bad things are here in California. The article titled, Don’tPity California: It Did This To Itself, points out how we pay more for gas, have more traffic and more (a quarter) of the nation’s illegal immigrants than anywhere else in the country. On top of this the article reports we voted to tax our way out of debt forcing numerous businesses and citizens to flee to more tax friendly states like Nevada and Texas.

Jerry Brown, Linda Ronstadt and Entourage

So, I decided to investigate. Sure enough, we did vote on a proposition to raise taxes. Governor Brown claims he plans to balance the budget and eliminate the debt with this new influx of taxpayer dollars. That seems a little weird, but then Jerry Brown has always been a little weird, even when he was dating Linda Ronstadt back in the 1970s.

Further investigation revealed some remarkable changes of fortune. Producers of the hit reality series, “Real Housewives of Orange County,” announced they were returning the series to its original home in of all places Orange County, California. One of the wives, who was promised anonymity in exchange for her cooperation, claimed when they had told her they were moving the show she heard it was for “lower taxes,” and didn’t realize until they parked her car in a drive in suburban Dallas they had said, “Texas.”

They're back!

“Why they don’t even have one decent beach,” she said. “When I was driving outside of Ft. Worth some cowboy jumped out of his pickup, grabbed his rifle and shot a snake on the side of the road. As I tried to pull around him he spit tobacco all over the front fender of my Lamborghini.” Hanging her clothes back inside her villa overlooking Newport Beach she remarked, “I’d rather put up with some surfer dude kicking sand on my blanket than the heap of dust that low-life redneck sprayed all over my leather seats.”

In a related matter, a friend of my daughter who graduated from one of the state’s universities, either UCLA or UCI, a few years ago took a job with Johnson Controls right out of school. Johnson’s headquarters are in Milwaukee, my hometown. When he first got there he was determined to save a bundle of cash with lower taxes and cost of living. “It was cool, at first,” he admitted upon his return, “I mean the cows really do roam freely and eat grass, unlike whatever they feed them in those corrals in Norco (a California city with a large dairy cattle population), and while you can’t surf on the swells of Lake Michigan, there are some pretty nice beaches. But then the friggin’ winter hit. I thought I knew what winter was because I’ve been up to the mountains to ski. No way, bro. When it’s friggin’ 20 below you’re not going skiing. Besides, there isn’t one real ski hill, let alone a mountain in Wisconsin. Not to mention that skidding on ice cost me two accidents, and probably enough in damages to cover the difference in the cost of living and those friggin’ taxes.”

My daughter’s friend was glad to hear the guy with as he put it, “a bug up his ass,” who wrote the article about the terrible problems and high taxes has decided to stay in California and teach at Stanford. I wonder why he doesn’t want to teach at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin?

Wall Street: The New High

For some people just looking at the chart gets them high.

So back in college what was your choice? Jack? Jim? Jose? Or, did you get high with Mary? Well, say good-bye to Mr. Daniels, Mr. Beam, Mr. Cuervo, and even the famed Miss Jane, because there’s a new kid in town, and his name is Jones. That’s right Jones, Mr. Dow Jones. No more tossing it back, sucking on a lemon or toking till your lungs burn, just a few hits on the investment line and you’ll be flying.

Tuesday the Stock Exchange rumbled with excitement as the Dow Jones smashed into the stratosphere at 14,253.77 at the end of the day completely divorcing itself from reality. In the five years since the previous high the nation plummeted into the worst recession since the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Despite collapsing to less than half of Tuesday’s record mark just four years ago and electing a Democrat president twice in the interim, the market defied all logic to bring their investors this new delirious high. One trader on the floor was heard to say the rush he experienced was better than meth and smack combined.

What a thrill? It's like traveling back to the future in my DeLorean.

As the nation mired in a recovery inching along with unemployment just leveling off, a real estate market fighting to come back, prices at the pump soaring and a completely incapacitated government the news from Wall Street really surprised nobody. One small businessman in lower Manhattan, only blocks from the trading floor, claimed the suits in that place have been tripping for some time. He figured it was from the government infusion Goldman Sachs and others received a few years ago. When asked about the government intervention one trader with a bewildered look claimed it was only petty cash, less than a trillion.

One source, a psychoanalyst with a foundation that maps trends in consumer behavior, considered the high on Wall Street, at least in part, was related to the surge in gambling in general. No longer does one have to venture to Las Vegas or Atlantic City or one of those guilt-liberating Indian Casinos to get the rush of risking money on what always appears to be a sure winner. Now, even soccer moms can sit down in front of their computers and use Charles Schwab or E Trade (out of the mouths of babes; who knew?) to put their money down on what based on Tuesday’s results is practically a no brainer.

Some traders became so high they were caught doing the Harlem Shake.

While many suburbanites are fighting to get back into the workplace or struggling to make do on smaller salaries for longer hours, a few lucky ones spin their wheels of fortune on Wall Street nearly every day. Being a part of this surreal experience gives these investors a chance to let their freak flags fly claimed our source.  One formerly homeless investor, who referred to himself as The Profit, an obviously fictional name he had emblazoned on his T-shirt with a dollar sign featured at the top of the P, stated he found the buzz he got from investing was better than cheap wine and pitching pennies. He said the blow he was able to afford these days not only was better than anything he could find on the street, but made his head clearer, so he can continue to pick winners.