Two of the most gracious readers of this blog are older Jewish men originally from down-state New York. One is my father. The other is a guy who lives in a park in the Southern Tier named Richard Malowitz. Richard handled evictions for my park in central New York until his health got the better …
A Welsh reader writes in: Did I ever tell you, Tom Jones and I were at Jesus College Oxford together in 1958…Jesus was known as the “Welsh College” having been founded in the reign of Elizabeth l by a Welshman… Jones and I hailed from Wales… We drank gallons of beer and sang dirty students …
This blog is for snark. I send the serious literary fiction and memoir to other organizations to publish. They send it back, and I send it out again. On the rare occasions when something is accepted, I put it up here after the rights revert. Some months ago, I wrote a piece called Lenny, Lucid …
Members of the Theban chorus were correct when they sang, “Πολλα τα δεινα, κουδεν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει”, but times have changed. Human beings had a good run as the strangest thing in the world, but we were unseated when courts in England and the United States developed doctrines of contract interpretation. The doctrine of consideration …
Consider these statements: When the Meatpacking District was still the Meatpacking District, there was a place where you could drink for free, if you consented to being handcuffed to the bar; Frank Rolfe says that owning a mobile home park is like owning a Waffle House where all your customers are chained to their seats; …
The more I learn about Yale Law School, the less I like what I hear. YLS is the birthplace of the Federalist Society. It is Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh’s alma mater and the primary platform for Amy Chua’s high-strung craziness and Jed Rubenfeld’s creepiness. Because there are no grades, career outcomes are determined by …
In a recent Ketamine-induced dream, I dreamt that I owned a mobile home park in central New York State. The park had fifty lots in all, forty-eight of which were occupied. The two empty lots had park-owned homes on them. One of the park-owned homes – the one closest to the pole barn and pump-house …
Economists say that tontines create perverse incentives. A tontine is an investment pursuant to which each participant puts a certain amount of money into a pot. The money in the pot is invested in whatever the participants want it to be invested in (biotech companies say, or swamp land in Florida). The money stays in …
Tontines, Viatical Settlements, Rent Control, and Girls, Girls, Girls! Read More »
It used to be that everyone made fun of Polish people. You didn’t even have to make a joke – you could just say, “Polish”, and people would giggle. If you visit the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY and go to the Blue Room, you can see old clips of Lenny Bruce. Every now …
I usually change names on this blog. Not so with Alex J. Stinson and Misty Shephard, AKA Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Falero. Those are their real names. I post them as a public service for other people who do business or rent property in central New York. Alex’s date of birth is July 24, 1972. …