A BAD, BAD DAY.

If it’s not one thing it’s another. That’s how D’Angelo Lee must have felt. First, his parents gave him a last name first and a first name last. The poor schnook is convinced that his real name is Lee D’Angelo.

Lee, is a former city official in Dallas who is under investigation in an FBI corruption probe. He was forced to resign from the City Planning Commission last year after being targeted in the FBI’s corruption investigation into Dallas City Hall. He was accused of voting on zoning cases where he was a paid consultant and not reporting gifts. He insists that his new Bentley convertible and 100 foot yacht were left at his door step one morning. You’d think that the FBI has better things to do than going after crooked politicians. That’d keep them busy for the next hundred years and leave no time to wire tap innocent people.

Mr. Lee claims that police authorities are pilling on him worse than the New York Giant quarterback goes through every Sunday. He was recently arrested for public intoxication after claiming he was robbed by naked and scantily clad attackers at a male strip club. The incident occurred outside Club Knubian Fantaciez, which was obviously named by his parents. This dance club becomes an all-nude male revue after midnight and that he was bushwhacked by three men, one naked and another in only a towel. He thinks the third man was wearing tutu. When asked if he could describe the attackers he just blushed and whistled.
Lee told police the men threw him out of the club, broke his glasses and stole his wallet, though he later found the wallet minus an autographed picture of Peewee Herman.

Club employees told the cops they removed Lee, who said he was there to pick up women, because he was creating a disturbance. Since there were no women at the male gay club, police doubt Lee’s story. Lee later called the incident “just stupid, really frivolous” and said he was only trying to get his wallet and his pantyhose back.

D’Angelo Lee, or whatever his name is, is convinced that he is just having a bad decade.

SHE CLEANED UP HER ACT.

One of the great things about New Yorkers is their aloofness. The majority of people living in a Manhattan high rise doesn’t know or talk to their neighbors. It’s just something ingrained with citizens of The Big Apple. Before I moved to ‘lalaland’ I lived in a lovely rent controlled building on the west side of Manhattan and never, ever met anyone in the building. I occasionally would give a quick nod to the people in the next apartment…and they were my parents.

Part of this phenomenon is because many New Yorkers are frightened of becoming a victim of a crime and feel that if they mind their own business and just keep their eyes straight ahead nothing will happen. The people I’m talking about are members of the N.Y. police department.

Because of this background I thoroughly understand the woman in Milan, Italy who wanted nothing to do with the city or anyone around her. She had good reason to be suspicious of everything – it seems she had a bout of influenza 26-years ago and it terrified Carmela so much that she tried to seal herself off from germs by barricading herself in her home and never came out again. Her fear of germs made Howard Hughes look like a greeter at some strip club.

Her plight came to the attention of Italian authorities after her brother, who leaves tinned food outside her front door, called police to say that upcoming medical treatment would prevent him from carrying on. Some speculate that he had gotten two severe hernias from carrying the tons of canned food. He admitted that he had not seen his sister in 10 years. When Italian health officials came to remove the woman from the apartment she has not left in more than two decades they had to don respirators against the stench. One of officials said it was even worse than inhaling a NYC taxi driver.

When they finally broke into the apartment to take her to the hospital they found Carmela, who is in her late 50s, weighing 66 pounds and had hair seven feet long. However, she was wearing eye liner. It seems the eccentric, shy Looney bird had sealed the apartment’s windows with adhesive tape and the shutters jammed shut. Apparently for entertainment she would sit in front of an old radio and watch it. Carmela’s main contact with neighbors has been to shout a single message through her door. “Shut the window on the landing.”

I think that this slightly erratic 55-year recluse should be made an honorary New Yorker. She even looks like some of them who stand in front of Bloomingdale’s and talk to the mannequins.

STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING.

Do you believe in coincidences? Seemingly illogical events that happen against all odds? There have been many occurrences historically that defy logic and calculations. Very few people know that Sampson, of biblical fame, always dreamed of becoming a jockey and when Delilah cut off his hair he was sitting on a hobby horse. What are the odds of that happening?

These strange events brought about the belief in the occult, ESP, extra terrestrial visitors and that hamburgers cause high cholesterol. Scholars reading the Dead Sea Scrolls have recently discovered that when Moses was supposed to have found led the Jewish people out of Egypt he was actually being fitted at Adelman’s Tallis Shop in Perth Amboy. That when Conrad Hilton, the founder of the hotel chain named after him, foolishly and unexpectedly married Zsa Gabor twice he knew that something horrible, repugnant and embarrassing would occur to his family – and Paris Hilton was born.

The latest strange and mysterious coincidence happened in Westlake, Ohio. A bar waitress checking to see if a woman was legally old enough to drink was handed her own stolen driver’s license, which she had reported missing weeks earlier. To further cloud this incomprehensible story the woman she was ‘carding’ happened to be 85-years old. What unexplainable force drove the waitress to ask this senior citizen for her driver’s license? Eh? “The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculations,” said the police chief.

The 22-year-old waitress called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen license by a woman trying to prove that she was 21. Even though the woman’s great grand daughter swore that Grandma was old enough for her boilermaker the waitress had a premonition that something wasn’t kosher. The young woman said she had lost her wallet at Moskowitz’s Fiber Glass Company.
When the suspect was arrested at her Senior Citizen’s Home, police found she also had a stolen credit card in the name of Charlton Heston.

These strange occurrences have caused the Geezer to rethink his skepticism about unusual and unexplained incidences. Could it be that there is some ‘force’ that is playing with our sanity? Trying to make us believe in the unbievable? This is a case for Dr. Phil.

AMERICAN ICONS....

The Geezer is not above or below living and learning. Unusual things really turn me on. For instance: I almost had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met. How did she know?

England is a glorious and wonderful country. Many Americans are fascinated by their history, culture and funny way of talking. They have just concluded a government project to catalog the icons which capture the essence of England. More than 350,000 people voted to choose the things that most represent Britain. Can you imagine trying to do the same thing in the U.S.? We can’t get 350,000 men and women to vote in the Presidential election.

The newest icons chosen were: fish and chips, Sherlock Holmes and Monty Python. They joined such icons as cricket, pubs and red double-decker buses on a growing list of England’s national treasures. The first wave of icons included Stonehenge, the FA Cup and the humble cup of tea. Isn’t that extraordinary and admirable? It’s so….British. There are obviously many other potential icons that could be included on this prestigious list. Things like: the Queen’s frumpy wardrobe, buggering boys at school, Camilla Parker Bowles/nee: The Princess of Horse-faces and last but not least – the ever popular monocle.

This is such a wonderful idea that we should adopt it in the States. What and who would you include on America’s icon list? The Blues, Judge Judy, Baseball, hot dogs with everything on it, Las Vegas, the Statue of Liberty, Jerry Springer, the book which has been on the N.Y. Times’ best seller list for two years, “Too Drunk to Jerk Off”, Country/Western music, gangsta clothes, our ‘do nothing Congresses’, Paris Hilton, and the successful new reality TV show, “So You Think You Can Fart.”

Maybe trying to put together an icon list for America isn’t a good idea. We are too diverse and intolerant to agree on anything. But if we did, I would include the mechanic who told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”

THIS IS THE CAPTAIN SPEAKING..

One of my great pleasures in life besides watching a dwarf play ‘Hora Staccato’ on a comb and tissue paper is to discover some self-important person in an embarrassing situation. The ones that consider themselves dignified and great and without them the rest of us would be forced to have intercourse with a pelican for fun. You know who I’m talking about, the men and women whose intellect is a mile wide and an inch deep.

I was tickled about a story out of Ottawa, Canada. I happen to know and love Canada, and in fact, was once given the keys to the city of Oshawa – actually it wasn’t keys it was a snow shovel. Butwhatthehey. I’ll bet all of us are always impressed when seated on airline flight to hear the reassuring voice of the Captain. With their deep, dulcet tones they make everything seem all right. That’s why when one of them screws up it brings me more laughs than a Three-Stooges film festival.

A pilot of a Canadian airliner who went to the washroom during a flight found himself locked out of the cockpit, forcing the crew to remove the door from its hinges to let him back in. Of course, if there had been an Islamic terrorist aboard he could have jimmied the door with his pen knife or box cutters. The incident occurred on a flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg. The regional jet carried 50 passengers and two hijackers.

With 30 minutes of the flight to go, the pilot went into the washroom, leaving the first officer in charge. The pilot denied trying to futz around with the smoke detector while he lit up marijuana. Anyway, when he tried to get back into the cockpit, the door would not open. “The door malfunctioned…this is a rare occurrence, “a spokesperson for the airlines said. She continued, “The crew’s decision to remove the door had been in line with company policy.” Apparently the airline’s policy also permits the crew to change a flat tire while the plane is in the air.

For about ten minutes passengers described seeing the pilot bang on the door, shout epithets in French and communicate with the cockpit through an internal telephone, but being unable to open the door. One passenger said, “It was a bit dramatic but why the hell did he try using the bathroom in first class? We aren’t allowed even if our kidneys are drowning. What’s good for the gander is good for a stupid French pilot.”
The airline stressed that at no time had the plane or passengers been in danger even though the first officer had never flown before.

LITTLE PEOPLE.

Some people consider me a mean spirited, antagonistic, disagreeable angry Old Geezer. They are lying rat, ignorant bastards! I happen to be a kind hearted, calm, gentle soul who hasn’t been angry since they canceled Punky Brewster…a day that will live in infamy.

Every once in a while somebody or some group says or does something that sets my tail on fire. It has to be something outrageous and hurtful…like canceling Punky Brewster. A female researcher from Princeton University published a paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research that makes me want to shtoop her so hard that her freckles fall off. The bottom line is her paper demeans and pokes fun at you and me. Its purpose is too try and makes us feel incompetent. This woman takes the un-American position that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it’s not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequity – but, get this – tall people are just smarter than their height challenged peers. “Height challenged”!? Do you feel height challenged? Who wants to go through life having to duck as you walk through the golden arches? Look out that you don’t bang your head entering a room with 14-foot ceilings?

What about the accusation that tall people are a lot smarter than normal sized folks? Did the researchers ever hear an NBA basketball star talk? The only words they can get out of their mouths are: “you know, whasup, like, know what I’m sayin’, and mutherfucker.” This is stimulating and adroit conversation? I totally reject the idea that huge, enormous, gigantic and uncouth pituitary freaks
are superior to us munchkins.

But the eggheads that are doing this damn research claim that, “As early as age three- before schooling has had a chance to play a role – and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests.” Other studies have pointed to low self-esteem, better health that accompanies greater height and social discrimination as culprits for lower pay. What is the real purpose of this study? To make normal, average people feel totally inadequate? That’s our wives job.

It’s time you and I stand up on our little, stumpy legs and shout that we are as good as anyone…except maybe Punky Brewster. I’m glad I cleared up the canard that The Geezer gets over-excited. Wait, where are my blood pressure pills?