Keeper of the Clown Bell

If you can't win then blow it up. The art of playing it where it lies. The rules are: 1. PLAY GOLF 2. STAY FOCUSED 3. BE PARANOID 4. BE PASSIONATE 5. GO AGAINST THE TIDE 6. GO WITH YOUR GUT 7. WORK WITH PEOPLE YOU LIKE 8. BE LUCKY 9. GET EVEN 10. ALWAYS HAVE A PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT That's from DJT's #1 Best Selling book  Trump: The Art of the Comeback which details how the future President of the United States clawed his way back to glory and super wealth after losing it all (on paper) due to divorce and a '90's "depression" in the NYC real estate market. There are those who find The Donald's beliefs "odd" and this Top 10 list is just the tippy-top peak of a mammoth iceberg of belief like the kind of thing you find floating off the coast of Greenland. It's a well developed design for living born of disciplined parenting and hard knock disappointment and betrayal and the Elvis from Queens has no trouble discussing, i...

I am the Walrus This will probably make me sound like a sociopath but on the morning of September 12, 2001 I woke up just like any other day, put on my suit and walked through Central Park to my midtown office to begin a days work. It was quiet in the city and not many people were "on the job" so I called my boss on the phone and asked him, "what's up? Seems like no one's working today." There was a confused pause on the other end of the line and then a gentle suggestion that I just take the week off and go spend some time with my wife and kids. So that's where my head was at the day after the 9/11 terror attacks and the reason, as I understand it, is simple enough - I was in NYC for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 2/26 was just another day in the Big Apple. The City didn't stop! We didn't "let the terrorist win." I was taking in a matinee screening of James Cameron's "The Abyss" (appropriately enough as it tur...

Argument #4 When I returned home from a week at the beach this summer my 10 year old 32" LCD TV was on the fritz. Oh, it still turned on, and the sound worked, I could flip through the channels but the color was whack because the "brightness" was saturating everything on the screen. It was unwatchable, but I watched it anyway because I'm lazy and I mostly keep it on for background noise listening to news or weather reports. After a month of this admittedly poor situation my wife demanded that I do something about it and so, being cheap, I tried to get it repaired. The TV repair shop I patronized for years has closed its doors so I had to visit the TV dealership for a diagnostic examination where I was told that a simple power supply replacement would cost $150 and replacing the board or chips would be $300+ if the discontinued parts could be found. I might as well buy a new one so I did - 43" LED flat as a pancake and light enough to lift with one hand all ...