what a hustle!

When crude oil was selling for a startling $147 dollars a barrel last July 11th I understood. It made sense. Food would have to jump in price as the cost for shipping it , growing it was greatly affected. So it was without much of a thought that I would walk into my neighborhood bagel shop and willingly pay $1.10 for a bagel. H&H Bagels in NY is basically an institution. Some of the best bagels on earth in my opinion and well, they were apparently getting hit hard by the energy price surge. I wasn't one to ask at that time. I like a crack whore fiending for the rock understood.

I got it.

About 2 weeks after the price went up and still in the midst of outrageous pricing for oil ( still in the $140's at that point ) they prominently placed a display of a newspaper article from the new york post which explained the 20 cent per bagel raise in price. It explained all of the obvious information about oil going up and blah blah blah.....ingredients cost more......blah blah blah........trucking cost more blah blah blah! so.....price jump of 20% or so...

I got it.

THEN.......well.....over time......oil went down.......a ton........as low as $37 a barrel and then well.....Bear Stearns went down and so did AIG , WACHOVIA...UBS...WAMU and the entire economy of the United States. You name it, it tanked. The economy went into the worst recession in 80 years and had already at the time of the oil explosion been in recession for 2 quarters ( just nobody was admitting it )

I got it

But you ask what is it I didn't get?

Why, that was the fact that I just went into H&H this morning and I still paid $1.10 per bagel. WTF is that about? a F*$&#*@g! bagel should cost 80 cents max. It's a bunch of high protein flour some poppy seeds and that's it...( ok an everything bagel does have everything but please! )..so with oil at about $50 dollars a barrel , roughly 3 times lower than the all time high. The economy in tatters and 4 million people out of work. They continue to charge the denizens of the upper east side ten cents north of the dollar mark for a bagel. It's an outrage. I CALL FOR A STRIKE!

Of course it goes without saying that the newspaper article on display for months slowly has vanished from the counter. No longer is the explanation for the price bump there. Also no longer around is the 401k savings for roughly 65% of its customers. I think its a horseshit move on their part to gouge for the price of a little piece of bread we already are getting jipped on ( I love the word jipped ) because it has a hole in it.

Tomorrow I will make sure to ask the manager about the newspaper article and the price jump and the across the board price jump on everything they sell. Im sure I will get an explanation about how things still cost more. Its a horseshit answer as its not true. It will be nice to hear it though.

just a thought

be well,

MOWO!™

1 comment |

I love Shaquille O Neal

Upon reaching the level of 5th ranked all time scorer in the NBA last night, Shaquille O'Neal was quoted as saying this about being right behind Wilt Chamberlain in the top 5 of all time.

“It shows I’ve been consistent at what I’ve been doing and the next guy is my illegitimate father—Wilt Chamberlain—so just like in Star Wars, hopefully I can catch up to my father.”

How can you not love that? The guy is really a character and seems like a really good person on top of that. Always has cracked me up , especially more so in the last couple of years.

be well,
MOWO!™

1 comment |

FACEBOOK.......

ohhhhhhhhhh FACEBOOK you fickle mistress.

the world is abuzz with you.....everyone loves you.

I GOT YOUR TWITTER RIGHT HERE!

ha!

I will admit , that I spend a little too much time on FACEBOOK and well it's a time suck.those of you snickering right now "OHHHH STOP IT" I have had some great things happen as a result of being on the oh so great and the best thing since sliced bread social network.

The sheer amount of friends from the past that I have reconnected with is nuts. Talking to people I haven't seen since nursery school ( that's a tough conversation to fill in the cracks on! ) "hey what have you been up to since I last saw you eating paste?" is a LONG conversation to have. I also have friends on there that I don't KNOW AT ALL and that brings me to my point. I make musics.....I offer musical offerings and I think I messed up on Facebook and now its essentially MYSPACE with more info about people I don't really need to know about.

But...back to the more positive things. I have reconnected with one of my oldest friends from childhood. I have been back in touch with old college friends. Great old friends from high school ( I left at 15 so, well.....not that many great old friends but folks I knew at that time in my life and that have growed up to be good eggs ) and lastly lots of my brothers friends who I had lost contact with.

HERE IS ONE THING I NOTICE THOUGH

Lots of the interactions on the facebooks are as follows. You hear from someone you haven't heard from since the 5th grade. You both are really excited about it. You trade a couple of messages of private emails. You make plans to meet up tentatively and then neither one of you really does anything about it. I equate it to the amazing scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry makes pretend to reach for the "OPEN" button in the elevator at the Dr's office. That sort of I will make pretend to make an effort face but in the end , I really am not making ONE single solitary move to do anything more than I need to at any time or increase my level of energy/effort. It's such a great social networking phenomenon. the "oh that sounds nice but we both know we are never going to do a single thing to actually get together" factor. LOVE IT!

FACEBOOK brings us all back together to then awkwardly not FINISH THE task! HA!

There is a reason I haven't seen some of you since the 5th grade. maybe you poked me in the eyes during a basketball game therefor forever making me think you were a schmuck. Or maybe you were a a kid that tried to bully me and I kicked you in the balls? I think our work is done. No need to be back in touch I've kneed you in the balls....must we be back in touch with one another? winces....I thought so....

For those people who say "what about getting back in touch and sharing old times and being sentimental?"

to thee I say.

fair enough. you are right. and there are certainly examples of folks you get back in touch with that you continue to stay in touch with and become great friends with again. Maybe it is finally time to get over the fact that I had pudding stuffed down my shirt by you. Maybe indeed.

I have a weird situation though, where I really don't know 1000 of my friends. Sure we might have 45 friends in common. BUT ISN'T THAT WHAT MYSPACE IS LIKE? I'm a recording artist so even though I have upwards of 3-4 dozen fans world wide ( WOO HA! ) I don't know them personally but if they ask me to be friends and I ignore them?.....well then that just makes me a schmuck ( actually the fact that someone was able to stuff pudding down my shirt might make me a schmuck...or them? ) anyway.....you see my problem. Its a social networking site but I don't really get to use it the right way. BUT.......neither do any of my friends. Do you know who uses it the right way?

MY MOTHER!

insane right? She and I were speaking the other night and her daughter in law had set up a facebook page for her and she literally is only friends with her family ( SONS ) and their spouses/gf's and THAT IS THAT. So she actually kind of gets it. She told me. I am not friends with anyone else. I just want to see what you guys are up to and that's it. We will see over time if she sticks to that but if she does that will be cool. I know that this started in colleges and was used by kids to stay in touch with what was going on on campus but even then when you have 436 friends and you go to Yale. Come on. You might as well be friends with everyone in your class at that point. Its effectively turned into a yellowpages of sorts when you are friends with 436 people.

Even my best friends...my gf.....everyone sort of has jumped the shark with this thing and is now in groups they never visit the pages for or friends with folks they don't really know. Myspace and Facebook get used for dating and hooking up. The instant that happens its no longer a social network. Its match.com for folks who are afraid of going on match.com ( you should be afraid btw.....very afraid) I understand that it's kind of comforting to see someone that friends with someone you know and maybe send them a note and its "SAFER" ...but.....it's not safer if they are friends with someone and only SORT OF know that someone. Then it's just basically a dating site. WE KNOW MY FEELINGS ABOUT DATING ( brings in panzer tanks ... surrounds "dating".....shoots it)

I would love to do an experiment where you literally go through your friends list and eliminate folks you don't really speak to. If you erased everyone you didn't know personally and who you had not seen in a certain amount of time or spoken to. The numbers obviously would fall drastically. for example I have 1,374 friends. I think my number would drops to like 1,273 ( kidding ) i would literally maybe have 50-100 actual friends/family that I care for and would actually unlike Larry David hold the "open" button on the elevator for.

try it.....I SAID TRY IT!!!!!

* leaves website and goes back to writing music *

be well,

MOWO!

2 comments |

oh, change change change......

THE SKY IS FALLING THE SKY IS FALLING THE FRIKKEN SKY IS FALLING.......

no it's not.

Is it me or are you as sick as I am hearing about the economy over and over and over and over again? It's like the media is following it like its "Storm watch 2009" I'm surprised there isn't some sort of "DOPPLER 5000 AL ROKER RADAR" equivalent for the economy like DOLLAR WATCH 3000™ or ECONOMETER 9000™ I've just had enough. UNCLE........UNCLE ALREADY!

between having to know my credit score is 800 or above or knowing that I couldn't get a loan right now because the banks are just trying to sock away money and hold it because they are afraid. I've had enough. AIG....eat a bag of dicks....... 99,000,000 tax payers in this country have done the right thing. A small percentage of people have pulled hustles and stolen and played games and fucked it up for everyone.

Here is my idea. Stimulus...... $25,000 bucks for each of the actually honest tax paying citizens. that's 2.5 trillion bucks. Think about it. Each of us gets 25K we sock it away or maybe pay some bills or better yet some of us buy some really stupid shit we don't need. Whatever it is......that is OUR money anyway being doled out to those companies. Shouldn't WE BE GETTING IT!?!?! For some folks its like a pittance and they'd quickly spend it on like a solid gold umbrella holder. FOR SOME FOLKS it would be roughly 25 times their worth on hand right now and could get them straight. Think about it Obama! DO IT! SPREAD THAT WEALTH AROUND!

But, to get back on point......Only a year or so ago you'd see these absolutely terrible Charles Schwab commercials with the cartoonesque outlines of real life people talking about how afraid they were of planning their retirements. You know them? One was a recently divorced woman talking about her future making her own decisions for a change and another was a white guy talking about how rich he was and another one was a another white guy talking about how rich Charles Schwab had made him but how afraid of everything he was and then there was that other one with that other guy who was white and also had some money he was afraid of losing and or having. Basically its just annoying cartoon humans totally afraid of their money. Healthy shit boys and girls.

NOW....

these commercials actually would make sense BUT.............the new ones are all about how CHARLES SCHWAB wont LOSE all your money like those "other assholes" who lost all your money and THERE IS NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. Charles Schwab is essentially saying in the ads....."hey , we're assholes too, and we didn't call all of this even though we are experts and we control a ton of money and its our job to see something like this coming, we are still slightly LESS assholes than those other assholes ***

*** I said asshole a lot.....

money sucks......and so do white people....and so do cartoon white people.

that's about all I learned from those commercials.

I think that we are just going through a time of change some of it actually isn't really that bad either.

we consume too much. we waste too much. we do everything too much. Suburban Jewish women ( IM JEWISH, IM ALLOWED, our women can be annoying! don't get me started on our men! ) driving around in suburbans that weigh 5,000 lbs....case in point. Does Rivka Goldstein-Glasscock really need to drive around in a truck that could not only have a Vietnamese family living in it but also gets 4 feet to the gallon!?!?! I mean, that's selfish in a nutshell to me.

yeah yeah yeah, I know....I'm an opinionated bastard. I get it.

It looks like a lot of newspapers are going out of business and even though I love to read a paper doesn't it make sense if we are going to move forward that we cant waste all that paper anymore? It's obvious we have been heading into a direction where online and virtual versions of a lot of things we do are going to be not only common place but needed. The amazon kindle is an amazing example of this. Hey....listen. I love to hold and read a book but you know what if something exists for me to make reading fun and give me the ability to take 1-1500 books with me and no matter what I always have them sitting on a server. Sign me up. I like that idea. Its pretty damn green.

Just like the wax cylinder was replaced by the 78 which got replaced by the 33 and 45rpm LP's which then got pushed out of the way for cassettes so that they could then get their asses kicked by cd's who then were bid adieu by mp3's...........SHIT CHANGES PEOPLE.

the only constant is the fear we have ABOUT the change and how easily controlled we are as a result of BEING afraid.

So we wont have newspapers soon? we wont have books? or CD's? or maybe even engines that run on gasoline? or better yet.....maybe we wont have imitation cheese spread and arby's restaurants anymore?

it's ok. we'll be fine.

we will get through this and the human species will be fine. maybe not everyone but , we adapt and move on. change is good. not just the word change for an election. actual change.

take a deep breath

fun fun fun

be well,

MOWO!™

2 comments |

THRU YOU

http://www.thru-you.com/

watch all of them, they are basically stunning. SO well thought out and conceived. Blown away. Sent to me by my producer/artist friend Josh Mobley (Neoverse) just a really incredible series of videos and sampling and arranging.

blown away.

enjoy

be well,

MOWO!™

1 comment |