Verizon’s ethically questionable payment fee was on the horizon, but fortunately the curtain rang down on it before it became just another corporate attempt to extort money from already cash-strapped working blokes. With added fees everywhere you look, from checked baggage fees to ATM fees, nothing costs what it costs. Makes you wonder what’s in store for 2012.  Here are some ideas that we could very well see.

Pew fees (an across-the-denomination fee). Why stop at the collection plate? Why not charge the faithful for sitting down to be lulled to sleep by an enthralling sermon?

Sin tax (for Catholics only). Provide Catholics with a Sin card they have to swipe before they can be absolved from their sins. Sort of a new spin on the old indulgence payola of pre-Vatican II.

Holy Water dispensers (again for Catholics only):  Upgrade regular blessed water to Holy Perrier and plunk in two quarters and you’ll get a holy squirt.

Pay toilets on airplanes: Why not?

Cushion fee: Why should airline passengers think they should have a cushion on their seat.  In 2012 I predict a $5 cushion fee.  The airlines will rake in millions.

Cone fee: In 2012 they won’t raise the price of ice cream, but expect to pay a $1 if you want it in a cone.

Sunny day fee: Why should nice weather be free?  In 2012 we’ll be billed for sunny days with an extra fee for a blue sky.

Plate Fee: With the cost of food going up, many people are not eating out as much as they used to, so why not keep the menu prices the same as 2011, but introduce a plate fee…and if that works, add a utensil fee.

Politician Fee: With 2012 an election year, why not create an honesty fee.  Any politician who says or does anything dishonest will have to pay a hefty fee. A subsequent fee will be a charge for running a dirty campaign. Could be the end of politics as we know it.)

Imagination Fee:  Not a big money maker for I fear imagination is a thing of the past. But if there were an imagination fee, I would be willing to pay it.

Dorothy

A pair of ruby Nikes
A new galvanized bucket filled with gin
A (short) leash/choke collar for Toto
A GPS (No more “recalculating for me!)

Toto

A (short) leash/choke collar for Dorothy
A dreidel chew toy. (Bet you didn’t know I was Jewish!)

Scarecrow

To be re-stuffed with hypo-allergenic, hay made from recyclable material
No brain, please. (Brains are highly over-rated and appear to have no value.)

Tin Man

A case of 10W/40 synthetic oil
A light-weight ax

No heart, please. (Why risk having it broken by some a** h***)

Lion

A high-priced spa package
A de-lousing treatment
No courage, please. (I plan on running for public office and courage will get in the way)

The Wizard

Some pepper spray to ward off annoying dogs
Anything that’s not green for God’s sake

The Wicked Witch

A high-tech, waterproof rain coat
A Dyson vacuum to replace that out-of-date broom

Glinda

Voice lessons
A new dress…I’m tired of being mistaken for Lady GaGa. I’m Lady GlinGlin!)

Uncle Henry

A subscription to Playboy
A divorce from Em

Aunt Em

A subscription to Playgirl
A divorce from that dolt, Henry

Twice upon a time there was Max the village’s only shepherd. Max was the thirteenth of his mother and father’s twelve children. Max was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which figuratively isn’t a bad thing, but in Max’s case it was literal, making it very awkward when his mother attempted to breast feed him.

Max’s pasture was on the border of Wales and Scotland. (Don’t go look it up on a map, because this is my story and I can write anything I want.) Max was the shepherd of a very unusual flock of sheep. Unlike normal sheep that have to be sheared first before their wool can be made into sweaters, Max’s sheep didn’t have wool. They had sweaters. Some were cardigans, some pullovers, and the black sheep of the flock was a turtle neck, which caused a number of eyes to be raised because the only turtle in the vicinity was a loose living reptile that had this sheepish grin.

Max was bored. His life had turned grey and there was the problem with his teacher, Miss Gulch who didn’t appreciate the fact that Max’s sheep followed him to school one day. And then there was the bullying. Max’s wardrobe was less than boyish. It’s true that he wore the typical shepherd’s tunic, but Max’s footwear was far from traditional. He wore ruby slippers because red was his favorite color. People wondered about Max.

On impulse Max sold his entire flock of sweaters, with the exception of Turtle Neck, to Ye Olde Abercrombie and Fitch and took his small fortune and sought to find his dream at the spiritual center of the nearest city of Oz. Unlike other cities that boasted magnificent cathedrals, the citizens of Oz had toiled for years building a casino.

Max entered the casino at Oz with Turtle Neck at his side and went straight to the roulette table. He removed the leather purse containing his sweater money and poured the contents out on the table. He yelled, “all of it one red!”

The rouletteer spun the wheel and as it slowed down the little white ball jumped back and forth. And when it stopped a “hush” fell over the crowd, which wasn’t a good thing because in my story a hush is a speeding object from outer space.

The “hush” crashed through the glass ceiling of the casino in the ballroom where it landed squarely on Betty White who was appearing in Dancing with the Stars with her partner Derek Hough. Judge Len Goodman held up his paddle and said “Fore!” which he should have yelled sooner because it might have given poor Betty White a chance to dodge the “hush.”

But back in the game room the wind began to switch – the casino to pitch and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch. And oh, what happened then was rich. The casino began to pitch…and you know how the  rest of it goes.

Max and Turtle Neck were transported over the rainbow to Kansas.

And with that “along the yellow brick road” comes to a close. And while the blog will stay up, Dorothy and her traveling companions will go their separate ways.

Since its inception in January 2010, the YBR has had 10,000 views…averaging 15 views a day, from a one-day high of 154 to a low of 0.  (For some reason, two blogs, “Beginning to see God Again for the First Time on the YBR,” and “My Three Fathers. A Father’s Day Reflection on the YBR” earned a combined total of 5,600 views, with both of them scoring views every day. Go figure.)

The end of the YBR does not necessarily mean the end of my blogging, but at the moment I want to focus my attention on a book I’ve been hired to write and another project I’ve been contracted to complete by the end of January.

Although I would like to conclude the YBR by answering the question Glinda asked Dorothy before she clicked her heels, “And what did you learn?” I believe I would like to save that answer for a book I want to write about the meaning of Oz.

There’s still facebook and twitter. My facebook goals are to come up with some really pithy and relevant quotes or some awesome lyrics I can post to the amazement of my facebook friends. And when I really learn how to tweet, I’ll tweet my ass off.

He bought his first car the same year I was born. I don’t know which came first. Me or the car. All I know is that when my parents got the call to pick me up at the Foundling Home they didn’t go by car. I came home the NYC way. By subway.

But that’s the subject of another story. This is about the Begley family car. A dark almost black blue 1948 Chevy that I believe was made from a WWII German U-boat.

And you wonder why my modeling career didn't take off. Pictured here with Arlene (RIP) and Virginia (RIP) Renz, Lincoln Street, Seaford.

The exterior of our 48 Chevy was the opposite of sleek. It had more curves than the fat lady at the circus. It was built to withstand an earthquake measuring 62 on the Richter scale. But it is the inside I remember most. The seats were covered in what I can only describe as “hide.” Perhaps it was made from the skin of an old donkey. Sitting on it for any length of time left marks all over your body that didn’t fade until I was 10.

The rear seat was low and the back of the front seat was high as were the sides. And because all my height was in my legs, meaning I sat low in the back seat, all I ever saw while driving in the car was donkey hide all around me.  Even when I tried to sit up high I couldn’t see out any of the car windows.  It was like taking a drive inside a box. I’d get in the car in our driveway and an hour or two later I’d get out in  some other driveway.

Thank God I could listen to the music coming from the car radio. Oh, did I say listen to music? Well, it had to be music playing inside my head because our car didn’t have a radio. But it did have a heater…if you were lucky enough to be in the front seat. And in the summer I would lose on average of three pounds of water that poured out of every pore in my body.

I compensated for all our 48 Chevy didn’t have by sleeping. I’d be out cold before my father pulled out of the driveway and would have to be pried out of the car when we eventually arrived at our destination…which was usually Brooklyn.

I believe the car is now a taxi in Tijuana.

In 1959 my father was ready to buy a new car. He had his eye set on the bottom model of the 59 Chevy line. It was a Biscayne. It had no details other than paint. The Impala, on the other hand, had all the trimmings. (Too extravagant for my father.)  But…it did have a radio set to station that only gave traffic reports.

1959 was a big year for me. I was receiving the sacrament of confirmation and as a special privilege I got to pick out the color of our new car. It was a no brainer for me. I wanted fire engine red.

My father came home in a sapphire blue 59 Chevy.  (But in my mind it was always red.)

The big spender, my mother, my sister (Patti) and me outside a cabin in upstate New York in front of our (red) 59 Chevy.

The grey interior was a cross between plastic and linoleum.  In the winter the surface temperature of the seats was about 16 degrees below zero and in the summer you could cook a steak on it.

I had grown enough to be able to see out of the windows and couldn’t stop yelling out things like” “Look at that, a building!” or “Do you see all the other cars?”

I learned how to drive in our 59 Chevy. A car that was standard with the shift on the column,  a car that had no power steering and had no power brakes. It was literally like driving a tank.  Parallel parking was an Olympic event, and trying to start on a hill was friggin’ scary!

In 1965 my father bought his third Chevy. It was shaped like a box.

]]> http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/a-picture-is-worth-at-least-a-thousand-words-on-the-ybr/feed/ 0 vinniebegley 48 CHEVY 59 CHEVY http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/open-the-vents-on-the-ybr-because-im-going-to-vent-whether-you-like-it-or-not/ http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/open-the-vents-on-the-ybr-because-im-going-to-vent-whether-you-like-it-or-not/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:16:34 +0000 vinniebegley http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/?p=1175 ]]> Warning: This blog is not intended for the faint of heart, those weak in the knees, hypocrites, old nun, old farts, and people who have a pole up their butt.

You know how astrologers are all into planets and stars aligning? Well, lately my planets have been crashing into my stars, so I do not apologize for anything I blog in this blog. I own the content and take full responsibility for the views expressed herein.

In my opinion, and since this is MY blog, that’s the only opinion I really care about, the greatest moment in The Wizard of Oz was when Dorothy deliberately and with malice in her heart picked up the bucket of water and gleefully threw it on the witch. (Unfortunately the gutless producers of the movie filmed the sequence to look like Dorothy’s action was unintentional and the resulting witch-melting was a regrettable outcome.)

Okay, where am I going with this blog.  Some background might help.

Look up the word “good” in the dictionary and you’ll see my picture:

good

And by “good” I don’t mean noble or virtuous. I mean good as in “well-behaved.”  I was good from day one. And if nice people finish last, good people don’t finish at all. Not that I’m against goodness. There is a place for it, but that place isn’t in the real world.

At this point in my life I have seen enough to know that there are two types of people in the world. On the one hand there are the egocentric…and egocentrics are like powerful magnets. They attract other excentrics…and in the end you have this powerful (m)ass of egocentrics who basically rule the world. And one of the characteristics of an egocentrics is this overpowering urge to kiss ass…as long as someone returns the favor.

And because magnets have two poles, eccentrics tend to repel those who are not egocentrics.

Now, you can find egocentrics in all walks of life and you’ll find they come in different sizes. Egocentrics can be anyone…but what makes them so abhorrent (to me) is that they abuse power. They tend not to use their power when they are in the presence of future egocentrics, but when they are in the presence of “good” i.e. well-behaved and well-mannered people they are in their element.

As a result, good people (perhaps you can call them powerless people) can be beaten down.  Now, I’m not an African-American and I’ve never been a slave, but I can certainly empathize with those souls who were slaves.  In order to survive they had to do the shuffle and say “yes master” and “no master.” And even though Lincoln freed the slave, it took over a century and a half for the descendants of slaves to throw off the psychological chains that had kept them in a constant state of bondage.  And to anyone with any understanding of what it means to be in bondage, you will certainly understand why there were so many decades of violence in Black communities.

If I had to do it over again I would not be good. Not that I would have wanted to be an egocentric asshole, but I certainly would have tossed a bucket or two over some real assholes.

I think we, as parents, go to great lengths to raise “good” kids. But are we doing them a favor or a disservice?  I sometimes think we are doing them a disservice. When we teach our children how to talk, one of the words (or phrase) we need to teach them is: FU! and then tell them to use the expression judiciously.

I’ll never forget when my son Nicholas came home from high school with a quiz marked by Dr. Cohen.  She marked a few questions wrong that were actually right. The good doctor told Nick that it didn’t matter how the dictionary defined the words, she had her own definitions.

Nick would have been right to have told her to F herself.

I went up to talk to Dr. C and all I can tell you was she acted like a total asshole.  Had I not been a good person, I would..and should have told her to shove her doctorate up her ass.

The problem in the world today isn’t so much a recession as it is an abundance of egocentric assholes.

I say go out and find a bucket and start tossing water on the assholes in your life. You’ll feel “good” when you do it.

I only recently started watching Shark Tank and have been amazed by the ideas (good and bad) but more about the negotiating process. The only invention I can claim goes back to my childhood (circa 1957) when I mixed Colgate toothpaste with Lavoris  (a cinnamon flavored mouth wash) and made a paste of what I called “paste wash.”  The name was terrible but the idea wasn’t a bad one, especially when you recall that years later Close-up toothpaste (the first toothpaste-mouthwash hit the market) changed the way we brushed our teeth.

Well, since 1957 I haven’t had a marketable idea.  I’d never make it on Shark Tank. Hell, I wouldn’t even make it if they had Guppy Tank for bad ideas. And speaking of bad ideas, there are far more of them than good ones.

Take a look at some ideas from the past that, well to use current vernacular…sucked.

Sea-shoes

Did you ever try to cross a New York City street after a deluge?

TV glasses

Don’t laugh. They could have worked. Maybe. Alright, maybe not.

illuminated tires

When a street lamp just doesn’t cut it. But for those of you who think this idea was lame, the makers of the Mini Cooper have a leg up on bringing this bad idea back as seen in a prototype they hope to roll out soon.

Mini's luminous tires

Maybe I just have to go back to the drawing board. Who knows, I could invent the next worst invention.

August 16, 1911

Time, it certainly does fly on the YBR. It’s hard to believe that my late father was born 100 years ago…in Brooklyn. And although he only lived to be 86, I thought it important to recognize a milestone.

Why?

Why not?

In fact, I’m hosting a 100th birthday for my father. A birthday with a cake, balloons, streamers…and even a game or two.

Crazy? Of course it’s crazy, but I am a firm believer in craziness. In fact I think there is a shortage of it in the world today.

Fortunately my wife and kids are behind this crazy idea. And that’s good. It proves craziness runs in the family.

My father was hardly a saint. Growing up my father was a royal pain in the ass. But he was transformed into a  royal grandfather…who could still be a pain in the ass at times, but he had mellowed to the point of becoming a real character.

My kids found him totally amusing. He had very bizarre eating habits (he’d load his cereal bowl with any left over fruit and jello he’d find in the refrigerator); he had no style (he’d wear a plaid shirt with striped pants and argyle socks); he was a total foreigner in the kitchen (soon after my mother died he attempted to cook a hot dog in the microwave. He called me up at work and asked me “where the hell did it go?”  I said “where did what go? (he thought I could see through the phone). “The hot dog. I put the goddamn hot dog in the microwave and now it’s gone.”  I asked him, “:How long did you put it in for?” He paused. “Five minutes.”  ”Five minutes?” I said. “You didn’t cook your hot dog, you annihilated  it. Look in the microwave and you’ll see hot dog fallout all over the inside.) My father needed a recipe to make ice.

And did I tell you he was handy?  If God had asked him to build the Ark, he would have had to ask someone else to give all the animals swimming lessons.

And loud?  He only had one volume. VERY, VERY LOUD.

And was he hard of hearing? Yes. He’d hit his ring against the table and yell “Come in.”

And how was his driving?  He once told my kids that you only had to stop at stop signs if a car was coming in the other direction.

He was a character. And he would have been a 100.

In real-time, it’s Saturday, July 23, 2011. The weather here in Orange County, New York…like the weather across most of the country… has been oven-roasting hot with temperatures reaching 100 degrees. And despite last night’s forecast for more of the same today, it’s cloudy. Very cloudy.  And it’s the weather that got me thinking of a bigger picture.

Who among us doesn’t dream of a life of a blue sky with a brilliant sun?  There is no room in our lives for clouds, but clouds are a part of life. But how we deal with clouds is an indication of how we deal with life.

When we wake up to a cloudy sky we sometimes have a tendency to think the whole day is going to be cloudy..and possibly rainy. As a result we let the clouds…cloud our thinking. Instead of believing that there is a good chance the clouds will lift and reveal the sun, we believe it’s going to be cloudy all day and whatever plans we might have had will be ruined.

Wouldn’t it be much better to deal with the clouds but believe that the weather could change and that there will be a blue sky? In life wouldn’t it be better to deal with the issue that cloud our lives and our thinking without predicting a continuation of clouds?

There’s no denying that clouds can bring us down, but those clouds should not rule our lives.

I guess some people might call it faith, but believing that behind those clouds is the sun, is what makes us dreamers. Much like Dorothy who believed in rainbows.

NOTE: In real-time, as I end this blog…the sun is coming out behind the clouds.

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with my nephew Michael from New Mexico. He always raises a lot of  good questions. Well, in the course of our conversation I used an analogy about painted furniture that I would like to share here.

Much greater minds than mine have attempted to make sense of our creation. That’s why I resort to analogies and metaphors, the use of which makes it much easier for me to wrap my mind around big mysteries.

Suffice it to say that I believe we are all a unique handcrafted piece of furniture and that our original source was a magnificent tree. When we’re born we are this amazing piece of solid wood and because we are all different, no two pieces of furniture are alike.

From the day of our birth there begins a process of what I would call “wood finishing.” Our parents, extended family, culture, religion etc. all have a hand in this process. By the time we start school we have a number of layers of shellac, stain, paint…whatever…on us. And while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with “wood finishing,” I sometimes fear that much of what we are and who we are begins to get lost under all those layers.

Before you know it, all those little intricate designs that make us who we are…the things that define us as unique creations, have been filled in. Before you know it we look like a piece of furniture that has so many coats of paint that all you really see is the last coat of paint and you would be hard pressed to know what the original piece of furniture looked like.

I think it’s our job to strip away all those unnecessary layers of paint to rediscover the piece of furniture we are. It’s not an easy process because it’s far harder to strip away a layer of paint than it is to add another one.

Genuine people are not covered with paint. And although genuine people are as rare as an honest politician, there are some still living in the world and those of us who find a genuine person can count ourselves among the lucky few.

Genuine people know that there is no place like home. Genuine people make you feel safe in their presence. Genuine people know the secrets of life.

But remember, genuine people are not perfect. Like a good old piece of furniture, they show signs of wonderful wear. They have nicks and scratches because they’ve lived life to the fullest.

And while it’s my opinion, I think the most genuine people I’ve ever met are trunks. These people have traveled the yellow brick road. They carry inside them the wisdom of living an authentic life.

The trick to remaining genuine? Never lose sight of the wonder of it all…and remain young at heart.

]]> http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/stripping-away-old-layers-on-the-ybr-whats-old-can-be-new-again/feed/ 0 vinniebegley 258071767_8ffd835e3d CarvdTrunkJan08 http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/looking-for-heroes-in-all-the-wrong-places-on-the-ybr/ http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/looking-for-heroes-in-all-the-wrong-places-on-the-ybr/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 13:41:01 +0000 vinniebegley http://alongtheyellowbrickroad.wordpress.com/?p=1135 ]]>

I do believe in heroes, I do believe in heroes

Call it by whatever name you might choose – recession, depression, or the economic shit hitting the fan…and blame whomever you like, Bush, Obama, or Millard Filmore, but the real signs of the times won’t be found in The New York Times or The World Street Journal, but rather on the marquee at your local movie theater.

Ever since the Great Depression mere mortals have been seeking refuge from the harsh realities of life in the dark confines of a movie theater. (If you ever want to watch a great movie about using movies to escape the blues, check out Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.)

Throughout the 30s it was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers who flew people down to Rio and taught them how to tap their troubles away. Today the silver screen antidote for our national depression can be found in the plethora of hero movies flickering in movie theaters around the country.

The hero. The figure from ancient times who played a vital role in the health of a society. The hero, a person who embodied attributes that all mortals wanted in their lives. Look at the listing of 2011 films and you’ll find heroes among them: Captain America, the Green Lantern, Iron Claw, Transformers, Spy King, Conan, Cowboys and Aliens and the last Harry Potter installment. In all those films, the hero is center stage. In all those films moviegoers has a chance to escape, if for a brief time, the real world and travel to a place in time where the hero rules and  where the bad guy is banished.

We, the people, need our heroes. We desperately want to believe that there will be someone out there with super powers who will make things right. And if only a fantasy, we secretly want to believe that when we leave the movie theater there will be some real heroes on the horizon.

There were no heroes with super powers in The Wizard of Oz. Even Oz himself fell short in the hero category after admitting he was a humbug.

In fact, all the characters in the Wizard of Oz, were figures who had a deficit in their nature. The Scarecrow lacked brains; the Tin Man had no heart; the lion was cowardly; and Dorothy was a  meek and humble farm girl from Kansas. But it was their deficits that allowed them to find the power within to change.

And even though Glinda could have played the role of the hero, she knew better. She knew that real power comes from within.

Hero movies are great. They fill us with hope. But unfortunately, the glow we get from seeing a hero on the big screen make the world right, fades by the time we pull out of the movie theater parking lot and head home.

One of the worst things we can do as a society is to expect “our leaders” be the heroes we find on the silver screen. Politicians, in my mind, make the worst heroes.

Real heroes can be found much closer to home. Real heroes are all around us. Maybe they’re not vanquishing the enemy, leaping tall  buildings in a single bond or smashing meteors in outer space, but they are out there. They are people doing small things for people. They are the people we seldom notice because we don’t really have a grasp of the heroic in today’s world.

And once last thing. While you might be the last one to admit it, you have heroic potential. There is a hero within all of us. And it doesn’t take a wizard to unleash the power. We just have to believe that every positive action we take…no matter how small…unleashes the hero within.

Now go and have a heroic day.