tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-191001332024-03-14T09:34:06.693-04:00Northwest NotebookQuis custodiet ipsos custodes.<br>
From Northwest Philadelphia...
News, Opinions & More.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.comBlogger297125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-26064572513521306482010-06-10T20:15:00.003-04:002010-06-10T22:06:46.669-04:00Happy Fathers DayI'm three for three kids! As more people learn about the Pinter play known locally as the CHCA board of Directors, they back away, like passers-by viewing an epileptic seizure on a busy sidewalk. Metaphor mania!<br /><br /> Dysfunctional? Undisciplined? Ruthless? But effective, right? Guess again Bunky. Because my winning streak coincides with the boards' losing one. Not surprising, since they concern the same events.<br /><br /> Let's go to the video tape.<br /><br /> First up, the long awaited PA Attorney General's Report, finding the local zoo inmates in violation of state fund raising laws, fining them, and putting them an official watch list. All out of an investigation that I participated in, after which I badgered the other investigators to call in the sheriff. The CHCA wiggled and squirmed, but they got hooked anyway. Ballard Spahr's star Jeanne Hemphill couldn't fix it. Look out Lower Merion School District. B.S. is representing them too.<br /><br /> Next up, the Good Food Market. All I wanted there was a defeat of the CHCA and their "all business-all the time" attitude regarding the 'hood. The letter of support the board sent to the Zoning board, all the influence they thought they needed to produce, was not enough, as near neighbors, and the Chestnut Hill Residents Association actually showed up at the hearing, and defeated the one aspect of the GFM's business plan that they objected to, one that the CHCA could not concern itself with. Not pro-business, you see.<br /> Crybabies that they are, they cried foul about the near neighbors being helped by some local pols, including Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, always a reasonably priced ally." Not fair " cried Greg Welch and others.<br /><br /> But Greggie and Walter and the rest of the Caucasian Talk Circle must have had a miraculous change of heart about such unfair tactics, because this time, concerning near neighbors v, Fresenius, a dialysis center,-like the GFM, a business on a residential street-the CHCA came loaded for bear. And holding a political Ace that they said was cheating when used by their opponents.<br /> More than a half dozen board members showed up. And this time, they had a letter of support from the same D.R. Miller. President Walter Sullivan even came to lend his smoke machine prose to the applicants' cause. But this rare show of force outside the friendly confines of their clubhouse didn't mean shit.<br /><br /> The near neighbors presented their case, again a small objection concerning hours of operations, specifically the option to increase those hours in the future. The CHCA Laissez Faire Society couldn't be bothered with compromising with such business haters. The rubber stamp had already been inked up and used.<br /><br /> But they lost again. After hearing near neighbors, and from a Chestnut Hill Residents Association Member, the City Zoning Board made its decision. Leave the hours as is. Victory-Near Neighbors. Defeat CHCA-Again.<br /> <br /> If that wasn't embarrassing enough to the CHCA, who came with a lawyer, Rob "Muscles" Remus, Bob "Young Republican" Rossman and others, dig this.<br /><br /> After a mouthpiece named Pincus-I'm talkin' like John Garfield here-tried to compare the proposed biz to the CVS-which is ON the Avenue, and got nowhere- he attempted to introduce President Foghorn Himself, the Voice of God, who would Save the Day for the Representatives of Hill Business and their fans-the dozen or so Hillers who haven't read the Wikipedia entry recounting all I have already told you about these clowns.<br /><br /> But poor Walter never got to speak. The Zoning Chairwoman stopped him before he wound up his seven day clock of ambulance chaser bullshit.<br /><br /> "I don't need to hear any more" she said, stopping Mister President in his torpid tracks.<br /><br /> There is no truth to the rumor that I had e-mailed her some of Walters' You Tube Marathon Soliloquies I have recorded for your amusement. The reason they always ask me if I have any recording devices on me when I come to meetings now.-Too bad- It's a public meeting, I can record it if I want to.<br /><br /> But I did call the near neighbors after the last, eye-opening-for-them-board meeting,and put them in touch with the Residents Association-for the support of an organization not in the pocket of anyone with something bright to dangle. Like a silver dollar.<br /><br /> Yeah, I worked behind the scenes again, as I have been doing for some time-Thwarting the Mediocrities at every turn, all in my spare time. Its really not hard.<br /><br /> Most of my advice boils down to a very simple bit of advice:<br /> Just stand up to them. They have nothing on their side except the acquiescence of those whom they profess to represent.<br /><br /> But that's all changing-Isn't it?<br /><br /> Ed (Who's Your Daddy?)FeldmanEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-68628813825848152352010-06-04T11:27:00.002-04:002010-06-04T13:26:24.836-04:00Making Converts, One at a Time.<br /><br /> If I had a nickel for every time I said, "If had a nickel...".<br />I got two more nickels in this weeks' Chestnut Hill Local. Or maybe I got 72 more nickels. Because every time someone attends Nurse Ratched's Thursday Evening Therapy Group, otherwise known as the Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors Meeting for the first time, they realize that my little stories aren't figments of imagination.<br /> The shell-shocked, following their inaugural exposure to the Hill's peculiar brand of Democracy, and a shower, often respond with" I didn't believe it 'til I saw it with my own eyes", when I ask them about their experience.<br /> The latest group to have their eyes pried open, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange Therapy Session, wrote about it in the Local, one in a letter, and one in an Op-Ed piece.<br /> They eloquently and specifically stated their objections to a single aspect of a new Hill business seeking a zoning variance .<br />Unlike the near neighbors in the Good Food Market case, these neighbors do not hide, or leave their objections open to interpretation by the opposition, although that has already happened.<br />Big Surprise.<br /> The neighbors request:<br /> That the business in question agree to keep their hours of operation, in the future, the same as on opening day, specifically 6 til 9 Mon-Wed-Fri and 6 til 6 Tue-Thurs-Sat<br /> That's it-Nothing else.<br /> The business wants the option to extend evening hours til 9 on Tues, Thurs, and Sat, in the future.<br /> CHCA board members have characterized those who sought this compromise- this promise to keep present operating hours, future operating hours; as enemies of business, and of the sick, and of the indigent, as racist, and they voted to oppose any such compromise.<br /> The African-Americans on the board did not accuse the near neighbors of racism.<br /> There are no African-Americans on the board.<br />The business owners want their options open. Here's where it gets murky, as dealing with businesses often gets.<br /> The hours of operation upon opening must be enough to satisfy their bottom line, or why wouldn't they push for those longer hour to start?<br /> Yet they say the denial of the longer-hour option in the future would be a deal breaker.<br /> My conclusion is this:<br /> They always wanted the longer hours. They want them now. But they thought that opposition would be too strong if they tried for them at present.<br /> So they thought it would be easier, and sound more reasonable to ask for the option, if in the future it became necessary.<br /> Putting it in a little at a time has always been a successful application of will, I've used it myself.<br /> It's a compromise with yourself, one you can always change, and always improve upon.<br /> And it works with those easily convinced of your good intentions , like undergrads of yore in my case, or the CHCA board in the present circumstance.<br /> Those who are still waiting for Snowden to rent something, anything, after he bought the board, will believe anything anyone with a bulge in his pocket tells them.<br /> Later, when the bulge turns out to be something anatomical rather then monetary, they swallow bravely and move on, on their knees- to the next bulge, hoping for a different outcome.<br /> CHCA president Walter Sullivan swallowed. He said the business would have to come back to the board if they wanted to increase the hours.<br />Can anyone guess how that meeting will go? Any different outcome than this last one?<br />Right-More Swallowing.<br /> Will I show up at the Zoning Meeting?- Will I bring friends? Will the CHCA board get beat again, just like the whuppin' they took over the Good Food Market?<br />Will the only people who accept their authority be those on the board itself, and the business owners it now serves?<br /> Fined, punished by the State, ignored by the eighty percent of the neighborhood who refuse to join, ridiculed and reviled by more and more-who all owe me a nickel apiece.<br /> Keep your money-I'm having too much fun.<br /> <br /> Ed (I've got friends downtown too) Feldman<br /> Morning Feed- Gtownradio.com-Mon-Fri 9-10AM Eastern<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> _Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-16540256680309968462010-05-15T10:17:00.000-04:002010-05-15T10:17:38.569-04:00Heard on the Avenue: Weaver's Way & Their Week-Old FoodThe Chestnut Hill location of Weaver's Way Co-Op is set to open today moving the opening of Monday, May 17th two days earlier. I think, and hope, it will be a much needed and appreciated addition to <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">Germantown</span> Avenue. <br />
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But be wary of their prepared foods. <br />
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According to one of the people who is preparing the prepared foods some items will be almost a week old when they open their doors. My source was making food on Monday, May 10th and was told it was for the opening of the store on May 17th. This person has worked in the food industry for 10 years and when they questioned the timeline those in charge shrugged it off with the explanation, "Oh it will be fine."<br />
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Now I have spent some time in and around food and most things are discarded after 5 days. I confirmed this at a restaurant a friend owns (Tavern on the Hill) and also at Top of the Hill Market. Selling food a week after it's made is a huge mistake. Understand that the fact they are now opening today is a good thing, as their meatballs are fresher than they would be on Monday, but if you take any home: eat now or forever hold your stomach.reverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-59054412527370368042010-04-24T12:27:00.004-04:002010-04-24T15:08:12.509-04:00Some Folks Never Learn-Because They're StupidIt's been awhile, but it's time once again to remind everyone how corrupt the Chestnut hill Community association is, and, without the helpful editing of the Local, what lengths its president Walter Sullivan will go to in order to retain the only position, of what he mistakenly believes is power, that he has ever "achieved".<br /><br /> In his last editorial in the Local, a privilege he subjects us to so very often, Editor Pete lets Walt bullshit his way through another extolling of a group that can't get a quarter of the people in its' neighborhood to join.<br /><br /> It can't get enough people to have a competitive election. Eight board spots, eight folks who want to fill them, but Walt still calls it an election. And he says the Hill has never been apathetic.<br /><br /> But he still finds space, and Pete lets him, to blame three people for all the Associations' problems. Okay, maybe four people.<br /><br /> Yes, those "few letter writers" who seek to undermine "your" CHCA.<br />Tell me Walt, how did I stop eighty percent of hill residents to avoid your small time power tripping circle jerk like the plague?<br /><br /> How did I, an admitted socialist, convince the Republican Attorney General of the state to fine your organization, even with Jeanne "the fixer" Hemphill all but dragging her dead father into meetings trying to make the biggest embarrassment ever brought to Avalon-on-the-Mount go away?<br /><br /> The top gun from Ballard Spahr couldn't fix it. She travels the country, getting corporate killers off scott-free and she couldn't quash this investigation.<br /><br /> To anyone with an ounce of knowledge concerning her culture, the conclusion is obvious.<br /><br /> If this was the best she could do, then the real findings were so much worse, that the efforts of a less connected defender of your coven would have resulted in a CHCA version of Jennifer Zogas' Grocery Empire. No more CHCA, no more fund, jail time for some, and of course some outraged letter blaming me.<br /><br /> Go ahead Walt, blame me, and Ron, and Jim. It's good for my ego. If I can get no one to join "your" CHCA, as you seem compelled, or commanded, to call it, to make eighty percent of the Hill not give a shit, imagine how powerful I am. I'm goin' after the IMF next, the bastids.<br /><br /> Maybe I can get people to continue to avoid "your" CHCA some more by telling them, again, that Richard Snowden, who has leased land his family owns in West Virginia to Massey Energy, whose criminal safety record has now resulted in deaths of dozens of miners, now controls "your" board.<br /><br /> Look it up, sheep. This is your new leader. He hasn't rented a single building, like he promised. But he is complicit in West Virginia Mining Disasters. Makes you feel all warm inside, don't it? When you feel like that in Mingo County, where his other business is , it's Black Lung Disease.<br /><br /> He scammed "your" board into paying for a rental consultant to train someone else so you could then pay that person to rent any of his properties that he feels like losing the tax write-offs for. Hold you breath. The "trainer" has worked for Richie before. She's gonna get more for the training than the person doing the outreach. Couldn't you just find an already trained outreach person? Not Richies' idea, you see.<br /><br /> "Your" CHCA is all waiting for Opie-hair to save you. To eat his table scraps, the menopausal petulant child that vomited racist signs all over "your" avenue when he didn't get his way, is given committee chairs, any variances he wants, while the Jenks principal thanks him for plowing a parking lot he had to plow anyway, and for letting art hang in his derelict buildings, making them seem less derelict without paying a cent.<br /><br /> He's "your" savior, and it's only costing you what, thirty-five thousand dollars?<br /><br /> The reason he got to take over, is that my doing too? Or is it because the exit of so many long time board members, some who were implicated in the investigation, like Stewart Graham, or others who got tired of being ashamed, created a power vacuum that Coal-boy entered, with help from his employees and renters. Richies' non-tax dollars at work.<br /><br /> Anyone examining Richards' past actions knows that, without his wealth, and "your" fear, someone of his psych profile would be sitting in a day-room waiting for pudding and meds.<br /><br /> Yes, this is "your" CHCA. Now run for his benefit. Everything else is gravy. Walts' self worth. His wife's embarrassing place at the table. Those patiently waiting for something to fall off of Richies' plate. Some resume building for the hungry young ones, formerly idealistic, who no longer speak to me.<br /><br /> That's okay, wide eyed successors to Jeremy and Tia. There's no afterlife, you can relax about the soul thing. Money and promotions and Ambien and Zoloft can solve everything else.<br /><br /> As my great-grandfather Tevye said, in a musical about his family, "There is no other Hand"<br /><br /> If you can't get twenty percent of the people in your neighborhood to join "your" CHCA, and you couldn't get twenty percent of those who did join to vote in the last election, when there WERE more candidates then board openings, just who DO you represent? Who is the "your" you keep modifying CHCA with?<br /><br />A four-percent "non-apathetic" electorate. Nice "discovery" councilor, no wonder this is your only gig.<br /><br /> Did I do all this to you, you dumb fucks? Or did you do it to yourselves? Dumb fucks usually don't need help screwing themselves, that is why they are called dumb fucks. They can't even figure out how fucking works.<br /><br /> No, I'll go with the former. I did this to you. Feldman the all-powerful. I have told the truth without fear, and the people, apparent from their actions, and the State, apparent from theirs, believed me. And I did it, as iIhave told you before, all in my spare time.<br /><br /> Tune into Morning Feed, 9-10 AM Eastern on Gtownradio.com for more. Even though "your" CHCA is mentioned in only one show out of twenty, Mr. Good Food Market still found time to refer to me as a "Roxborough Radio jock" in singling me out as his adversary. I like the sound of that, it makes me sound tough.<br /><br /> Since I made the people not shop at your market dude, so can I please get a letter to that effect so I can show my advertisers what kind of power I have?<br /><br /> Ed (King of all overpriced Grocery Stores on non-commercial side streets opened in a depressed neighborhhood in the middle of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression by someone who had never done this before) Feldman<br /><br /> Next Time -A Really Great Jeanne Hemphill StoryEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-57779778421801823332010-03-27T14:39:00.004-04:002010-03-27T14:54:21.474-04:00word on the street: another store closingWith all the troubles Good Food Market has had in the last six months (and probably even longer, I just hadn't noticed) I was happy to read in the most recent issue of the Chestnut Hill Local that their problems with L & I were solved within twenty-four hours of proper applications. This makes the news I was just told a little harder to swallow.<br /><br />Word on the street:<br /><br />The <strong>Good Food Market will be closing their doors forever</strong> at the end of the month. At the end of what month? I am assuming April since March's end is so close and no mention was made of this in the Local article last week. Sources also said that some kind of 50% off sale would come next.<br /><br />Since no official announcement has been made, the person who told me said their spouse discovered the market's closing on his own, <strong>I cannot swear that there is any truth at all to this rumor</strong>. I will say that the source is reliable: a long-time local business owner and CHBA member.<br /><br />The Local article also mentioned that their most recent set of trouble with L & I were caused by anonymous complainants, who are still unknown. I say that complaints without a face should not be acknowledged. Everyone has a right to face their accuser! Who knows?... it could end up being love at first spite.reverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-63259186738861022302010-03-27T11:53:00.003-04:002010-03-27T18:42:05.947-04:00A Night of a Thousand ScarsI'd like to thank the Academy.<br /><br /> Triumph is not too strong a word to use, regarding the outcome of the Pennsylvania Attorney Generals' investigation into that group of naughty children known as the Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors.<br /> The board will spin the "violations" (the AGs' words) alleged and the fines levied, as a slap on the wrist.<br />I couldn't agree more.<br /> A slap is what this crowd deserves. Or maybe a spanking.<br /><br /> I have watched as the board committed fraud, paid off friends, whited-out incriminating documents, rigged elections and destroyed the ballots, and, when found out, gaveled down those who produced the proof at meetings-me- and threatened to call the police for the dangerous act of....asking embarrassing questions at public meetings. They have threatened me with police five different times. I haven't seen any yet. I'm waiting.<br /><br /> Their threats started when I pointed out their violations at meetings five years ago. But when I got elected to the board, along with some other reformers, we formed an oversight committee, chartered by the board for a three year term. Two lawyers and a former bank executive were on the committee. They did the hard work, and I played the trumpet and wrote about it.<br /><br /> When we reached our conclusions, we presented our findings to the board, but it was too late.<br /> Some of the folks who had broken board rules, and state laws, had fled, but others had run for the board again and gained back the majority.<br /> <br /> It was to this, new-old-dirty board, that the oversight committee presented its findings, and recommended remedies. Like give back the money used in violation of the state grant, and most importantly, have a forensic audit to find out where all the money actually went. And find out what kind of legal entity the board was. It had no idea. It raised hundreds of thousands and wasn't registered with the state, therefore avoiding official scrutiny.<br /> <br /> The new board responded by rejecting every finding, and disbanding the oversight committee, more than a year before its term was up.<br /><br /> I told my associates that it was time for US to call the cops. They were more reasonable, and thought the board would be too. The found a donor to pay for the audit, as the board, with more than a million dollars in the bank, was pleading poverty. The board rejected the offer.<br /> I said call the cops.<br /><br /> Pleas were made. The board was given every chance to reform, or at least find out what had happened. Nothing.<br /> We called the cops.<br /> We got the PA Attorney General to investigate. We gave them our report. I gave testimony. I curled their hair.<br /> Now the report is out, and it turns out that we were right. The CHCA owes fines, and has to start keeping minutes of Trustees meetings, which it has previously avoided, and finally register their activities with the State. And they will be, from this moment forward, watched. I don't have to do it anymore, because the State will. It's all in the report.<br /><br /> I went to the board meeting on March 25, 2010 to finally read the AG's report which would be discussed and to have my fun.<br /> Can anyone guess what happened?<br /><br /> Their spin has already begun. But more telling than the "official story' are the actions of the players themselves.<br /> That the AGs' report would be a subject of the meeting was well known.<br /><br /> Imagine my surprise when less than half of the board members showed up, barely a quorum.<br />The long tables, for board members only, were set in their customary square configuration, an interior design metaphor used to marginalize the public at a public meeting.<br /><br /> But something was different this time. The table at the "head' of this arrangement, had always been filled with the officers of the board, all whispering to each other during meetings regarding how to deal with, well- me usually. Remember-direct questions?<br /> This ten person table, was now empty. Only Walter Sullivan, President of the board, sat there.<br /><br />All his friends avoided the meeting. The board has a rule you see, or more accurately, the absence of a rule, about directors attending meetings. They never have to attend meetings. Never.<br />The ones that came, literally, kept their distance.<br /><br /> It looked like The Last Supper,but with all the Apostles out at the Pool Hall, trying to divide the thirty pieces between them. Walter should be pissed at them, not me.<br /><br /> Those who would have been most embarrassed by the report chose to attend to other matters, including one the masterminds of so many of the offenses, Dina Hitchcock.<br /> <br />But I was there.<br /> <br />First, a presentation from a Green Initiative group, about making Chestnut Hill environmentally responsible, during which I never mentioned that the largest developer of Hill commercial real estate, Richard Snowden, derives his operating capital from the leasing of West Virginia land for the strip mining of coal. Richard, board member, not having any pet projects waiting for the rubber stamp from a board he now controls, was not present. I didn't mention him.<br /> See, I was on my Best Behavior.<br /><br /> Then the four and a half page Compliance document was distributed, and time was given for it to be read. The person giving them out refused my request for one, but another board member gave me hers. I don't know her name, but I thank her.<br /><br /> Jeanne Hemphill, Head trustee for the Chestnut Hill Fund, in charge of over a million dollars in contributions, joined Walter. I didn't see any other Trustees. including Bill McGuckin, who once almost had a stroke over my behavior.<br /> I guess criminals don't return to the scene of the crime. Unless they have to put a lovely pink bow on a smoking gun.<br /> Jeanne tried her best. After all, one her specialties, listed on the website of her law firm, Ballard-Spahr, is the defense of corporations and organizations involved in government investigations.<br /><br /> She claimed that some of the issues raised in the investigation had come as surprises to her, and to the accountants that the board had hired, halfway through the Oversight Committees' investigation, to try and clean up a fiscal mess created by a board that felt it proper to conduct audits every OTHER year. <br /><br /> I can vouch for the accountants' surprise, but not Jeannes'. When the head of the Oversight committee told those accountants about some of the things we had found, they were surprised too. The board hadn't told them everything, you see.<br /><br /> Jeanne finished her presentation. She did not seem comfortable explaining all this in public. She had, before her explanation, recommended that the issue be discussed in executive session, excluding the public (me), and repeating the rationale for secrecy, even after President Walter repeated that the discussion should proceed in public. I had to tell her to stop, that the ruling had been made.<br /><br /> The president opened the floor for questions. The board was silent, except for two minor and forgettable questions.<br /><br /> Frankly, most of the board members present were ill equipped to ask anything. Most of the guilty ones were elsewhere. Those who were present remained silent.<br /><br /> After Walter asked three times if any board member had anything to add, he just had to open the floor to the public.<br /><br /> I was the only taker.<br /><br /> He warned me that I must confine myself only to issues contained in the document at hand. Remember, this is a public meeting, in a democracy, and Walter even claims to be a democrat.<br /><br /> I agreed, cause I live for moments like these.<br /><br /> SO I sez to her I sez: Jeanne, you cannot claim surprise about anything contained in this document. Everything the Attorney General alleges, everything they have discovered, was first discovered by the Oversight Committee, and told to you in this room, at these meetings over and over. You were given the chance to do something about it and clean it up yourself. You refused. You disbanded the Committee instead. You brought these sanctions, and these fines on yourself, through your denials and refusal to self enforce.<br /><br /> At that point a lot of things happened at once. Walters' gavel started striking at ramming speed cadence. Jeanne started re-explaining her "ignorance defense".<br /><br /> And Tolis Vardakis, past president of the CHCA, involved in much of the cover up, made a motion with his hand. I followed the direction of his gaze and found its subject.<br /><br /> It was Rob Remus, board member, real estate agent, who has in the past; told employees at the Chestnut Hill Local newspaper, owned by the CHCA, how to do their job, without the benefit of any experience in that vocation, used homophobic hate speech towards a Local employee, who was then fired as a result of the incident, threatened a lawsuit against the CHCA, that he volunteers on ,for defamation, and received a four figure settlement from the organization for not bringing the suit.<br /><br /> Rob is large, stupid, and a coward. But because of the first two attributes, Tolis apparently thought that he could be used as "muscle" against the latest dangerous attempt by your humble narrator to commit freedom of speech in public. Rob turned to me and told me to be quiet.<br /><br /> I responded by refusing , adding that if he laid on a hand on me, I would put him in the hospital. I have been waiting for these tough guys to try and be tough with me for six years. They're all talk.<br /><br /> The woman next to him, Countess de Peroxide-Wedgewood I believe, became the latest in the long and distinguished line of board members to brandish her cel phone at me with that tired police threat. I told her the number, and told her I would wait for them, and her explanation to them for the call, and the resulting laughter. She's new, she didn't know I'd seen this play before.<br /><br /> She left the room, either to make the call and be laughed at in private, or to make believe she was making the call. We'll never know.<br /><br /> Things calmed down. Jeanne explained some more. Walter said one of the allegations was "piddling" and he would love to fight it in court. But he also urged that the board sign the Compliance agreement and pay the fines, so I guess he doesn't really want to fight it in court.<br /><br /> The motion to sign and pay the fines was passed, unanimously, save for one vote. No one said anything else about the matter.<br /><br /> Except for me.<br /><br /> After everyone was ready, in the words used by the perpetrators of so many lies, crimes, misdemeanors, cover ups, to "Move On", I had one last comment to the silent, sullen, room.<br /><br /> "GUILTY AS CHARGED" And then I left<br /><br /> I saw Lady of the Plates in the lobby and I told her I would wait as long as I could for the police to arrive, but as the business in the meeting that concerned me had concluded, that time was finite.<br /><br /> Actually, had the police arrived, I, as the first one to see them, in the lobby, had intended to tell them that The Duchess had exposed her genitals at the meeting and that was the reason for their summoning. I waited as long as I could. I guess the Flash Mobs are a police priority.<br /><br /> Too bad. I had tweeted the Mobs to come to the meeting. I wanted them to see how the white people committed crimes. Nothing like learning from the Pros.<br /><br /> The entire AG report will be linked to as soon as I get someone to do it.<br /><br /> Thanks to the PA AG, and to the Oversight Committee. They did all the work-I had all the fun.<br /><br /> They never did call the cops on me, because they had no case and no guts. We did call the cops because we had both. And now I have an ending to my book.<br /><br /> I want to share this Award with my Agent, my Manager and my Lifemate. Don't buy fur , and please spay or neuter the CHCA board of Directors. Oh, I guess I took care of that last one already.<br /><br /> Ed(Best Actor in a Leading Role) FeldmanEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-9431974056765772592010-02-17T12:44:00.003-05:002010-02-17T12:47:57.205-05:00Meeting TonightThere will be a meeting tonight at the Hill House to discuss the future of Germantown Ave. Here is the information from the invite that was e-mailed around:<br /><br />PLEASE, DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER<br /><br />A discussion of Chestnut Hill Politics, Culture & the future of the Avenue.<br /><br />Peter Mazzacaro (editor of the Chestnut Hill Local)<br /><br />Annie Hart (motivational speaker and author of op-ed "Retail Consultand Can't Change Hill Culture)<br /><br />Wednesday, Feb 17th<br />5:30pm @ the Hill House Lobby<br />201 West Evergreen Ave<br /><br />RSVP: chriss@connaughtinc.comreverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-50704113617913991092010-01-22T10:20:00.007-05:002010-01-22T11:00:13.447-05:00Two Plugs are Better Than OneI have missed reading new and exciting posts. It's been over a month so I figured I would start the ball rolling.<br /><br />Just got done making a debut on <a href="http://www.gtownradio.com/">G-Town Radio</a> on Ed Feldman's show. I gotta say: Classy, classy act. I will be back on the air soon if Ed will have me.<br /><br />I was on the show for the same two reasons I am writing this now. I am plugging two things.<br /><br />The first is the release of my Live in Chestnut Hill album recorded last September as part of Chestnut Hill's Beatle-Mania weekend.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2mIqGsIG9pcEp-VE95D8g_Vt0qnsJtKRNoLsrMZIXy9_4xYBfG4O9OKmhKz6ZwCs95KZ_0nhT1Efh7EC95MMkOdd9GSUNsit0mMSfngsN6gRp77gXrldVgF8iqMKtJ9boeXbWg/s1600-h/NEW+RELEASE.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 397px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 284px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429590681687298018" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2mIqGsIG9pcEp-VE95D8g_Vt0qnsJtKRNoLsrMZIXy9_4xYBfG4O9OKmhKz6ZwCs95KZ_0nhT1Efh7EC95MMkOdd9GSUNsit0mMSfngsN6gRp77gXrldVgF8iqMKtJ9boeXbWg/s320/NEW+RELEASE.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Now that that is out of the way it's time for the important stuff.<br /><br />The second is a benefit for my wife's medical bills. It is tomorrow nite at the Venetian Club in the third floor ballroom. Food is being donated by Drake's Gourmet Foods, Tavern on the Hill, Campbell's Place, Bacchus Market & Paul Roller. Beer is free! And there will music, music, music. Member's of Roger Learnard's Dodge City Junkies, Melissa Martin, Jim Fogerty, Jason Fifield, myself and other will be jamming out to each other.<br /><br />Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the door. There will also be a silent auction with great items including tickets to a Broadway show, an oil painting by local artist Christine Donahower, items from Hideaway Music, Boccelli's, and more that I haven't been told about. Tickets and donations can be made at Artisans on the Ave or by PayPal using the address Clairegolden@yahoo.com<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzF5TNIMV-a_zPuPwFBE60NK9CxzRptdUNGc12ficmZpAJ7HGBMawsZS33olYGBIEotPq3ZbqHA17vUSOtuPt-5HfMNCWeD94KKDyA_98xE6sGumto0dwwM0forayl-LLwZkdX_g/s1600-h/benefit+invitation+flyer+2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 307px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429594080263645570" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzF5TNIMV-a_zPuPwFBE60NK9CxzRptdUNGc12ficmZpAJ7HGBMawsZS33olYGBIEotPq3ZbqHA17vUSOtuPt-5HfMNCWeD94KKDyA_98xE6sGumto0dwwM0forayl-LLwZkdX_g/s400/benefit+invitation+flyer+2.jpg" /></a>reverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-71423456739381971302009-12-02T15:12:00.002-05:002009-12-02T19:09:26.533-05:00Not Hard to FigureYou would think that it would get harder to come up with an angle on The News, what with eleventy thousand Networks and Websites, or maybe its just that I haven't been able to find the explanation for President Barrys' Afghanistan Surge-o-Rama anywhere that satisfies my particular World View. Or maybe I haven't looked hard enough.<br /><br /> Or maybe it's because my riff is not based on a World View, but on the nature of ambition, a motive based on that ambition, and the secret that every Politician tries to keep from the Electorate.<br /><br /> That secret is that they are politicians. Not Public servants, or Statesmen/women, or Defenders of the Flame. They're Politicians. It's the only lawful profession, other than stripper, that will never be admitted to by those who practice it.<br /><br /> Strippers always refer to themselves as dancers. But even they won't use stripper as an epithet when referring to their enemies. Yet when politicians want to insult the opposition, what do they call them? Politicians. What do they accuse them of "playing"? Politics. They insult them by calling them politicians, which is what they are, what they both are. They ask for your vote by claiming not to be "carreer politicians. "<br /><br /> This all explains the higher poll numbers for strippers than for politicians.<br /><br /> Now that I have revealed the real profession of our president, let us remember what a politicians' first job is. It is to get elected. Or re-elected. Before the policies and the State Dinners, and the Dog and the Helicopter, comes the election and the strategy for its' success.<br /><br /> Barrys' team has shown an aptitude for election success in the past. It was its' reason for being. Why should its' motive change now? That includes A-Stan.<br /><br /> Can you present a plausible alternative? Let's try.<br /><br /> 1. Nation Building in Afghanistan. A pile of rock, ruled in increments of a few thousand square miles for millennia by tribes with no history for building any cohesive organizations other than the ones used to repel outside invaders. Barry knows this history as well as I. That can't be it.<br /><br /> 2. Resource Plunder. (See Halliburton/Iraq.) No Oil in A-Stan- just Poppies for Heroin, and we say we want to eradicate that. And the CIA already established the pipeline from Southeast Asia thirty years ago, their reward from Viet Nam. (And Barry said their were no similarities.) Hashish? Afghanny was great, but Europe smokes it all up and none of it has gotten over here for twenty years, take it from one who knows. So that can't be it.<br /> PS: I Love Amsterdam!<br /><br /> 3. Oh the terrorism- the 9-11 thing. That smoking gun of a twenty second film of some guys on monkey bars, reputed to be shot in Afghanistan. Because to make a bomb, and to plan an attack, you need to all be in the same country at the same time so you can be caught more easily. And be good on the monkey bars.<br /> <br /> Like those guys who planned 9-11 in Ramada Inns and Titty Bars and over the Internet and on cel phones from Germany and Palm Beach. The guys we now get to kill on grainy TV by unmanned drones controlled by Art of War Grads from another part of Florida.<br /><br /> Or the guys arrested in hotel rooms by European Interpol types who all cooperate with each other and the CIA to trace them 21st century style, with technology and paid informants. The agents of governments who don't want to help us "on the ground" in you-know-where. Terrorists are criminals and criminals are caught be clever police, not by Armies.<br /> Who was the last terrorist caught by a tank? So that's not it either.<br /><br /> 4. That we give a shit about broke ass Third Worlders who, without our help, would fall under the tyranical rule of woman hating fundimentalist power freaks.<br /> See Somalia, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Mississippi. Check.<br /><br /> Afghanistan will get back to being exactly what it was going to be before we got there, right after we leave. We all know that and we don't care.<br /><br /> Just like we, with the Medias' help, have already forgotten about Iraq. Remember Iraq? Do people still get blown up over there on their way to the store? Is the Government stable? Do Sunnis and Shia still control their own neighborhoods and towns and provinces and no one goes into the "other place" without getting killed?<br /> Remember when it was important to care about that shit? It was just six months ago.<br /><br /> Now that it's not on the Front Page, we don't .<br /><br /> Barry knows all this too. I always give politicians the benefit of the doubt regarding their grasp of the situation. It makes them look so much worse when they feed us some other line of horseshit.<br /> <br /> He knows that as soon as we leave Afghanistan and replace its' space on the Front Page with something else, all is forgotten. We just replaced Iraq with Afghanistan, just like Cheyney replaced Afghanistan with Iraq seven years ago.<br /><br /> So why don't we leave now? And why is the withdrawal date July, 2011? Think hard, you'll get it. Think about what Barry does for a living.<br /><br /> On a wall, in a room we never see, is a Pie Chart with Three Slices. One Slice is labeled, "The people who will never vote for you, no matter what you do." The folks who made the Chart never mention this Slice<br /><br /> Another Slice is labeled" People who will always vote for you, no matter what you do " They never discuss this slice either.<br /><br /> And then there's the Slice in the Middle.That one is labled,"The Slice you need Fifty-One Percent of."<br /><br /> Millions of dollars go to pay people and to create slogans and ads and tactics and lies to get that Fifty-One.<br /> The calculations have been made. That Fifty-One Percent of the Middle, it has been determined, can be persuaded by the Republicans that if Barry pulls out now, he will be a Chardonnay Drinkin' Frenchified Coward of Kerry-like proportions, and not fit to be at the helm of a big powerful country with the job of protecting us and leading the Free World, blah, blah, blah.<br /><br /> It's bullshit as old as the Hills, but there are people who still believe it. They believe Infomercials too.<br /><br /> So Barry will get on his Horse and ride the Range, for Two Years. The Generals will be told to keep casualties to a minimum, and Barry will greet the returning Soldiers.<br /><br /> Then, in July 2011, he will announce Great Advances in whatever Standards of Success his people have already figured they could achieve, and then leave.<br /><br /> Afghanistan will return to what it was, and we'll forget about it, because the Media will stop covering it. Their attention will turn Elsewhere. To what, you may ask? Thanks for asking. I will tell you.<br /><br /> The Summer of 2011 is when the 2012 Presidential Campaign begins. Fresh from declared success in Afghanistan, and fresh from an economy which will have recovered enough for us to forget how really good it used to be, Barry beats Mitt, or some hillbilly.<br /><br /> And you thought that speech was about a military campaign. Military campaign are militarys' job. Getting elected is Barrys' job. And he's good at it. I don't dislike him because I expected this.<br /><br /> The real idiots are the Michael Moores of the Left who didn't see this coming and now feel betrayed. But they'll all vote for Barry come 2012. Who they gonna get? Somebody cooler? Clooney already has a better job. Somebody whiter? Then they're racists. Somebody blacker? Then they'll lose. Barry was their perfect candidate. They could be hip, tolerant, and safe, all at the same time. Barry figured all this too.<br /><br /> Their childish naivete is the reason they'll never be in power. It's not a game for children.<br />When the Real Left grows some balls and spits in the eyes of those who call them Stalin, then they'll win, get Single Payer, and re-establish a 50% bracket for those who fucked our economy, took the bonuses and hid the money offshore. Barry don't play that. He played you.<br /><br /> Until then, they'll put their faith in Centrist, Corporate, angle-players like Barry, Bill, and Hill, and then feel used. Poor Babies. No revolution for you Michael, you backed a Politician.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-6101898520025823142009-11-18T15:43:00.005-05:002009-11-18T18:30:55.535-05:00Oh Well, I Guess I'll Write about Her Too-by Ed( No,it's not about you, Richard) FeldmanI feel dirty writing this, and not in a good way. But since everyone else seems to have already written about her, and since it's so easy, and since I haven't read the thoughts that I will share with you now (although I wouldn't be surprised if they had been written already), I guess, well, here goes. But my heart isn't in it. But I won't mention Her Name, and that will make me feel less like a Bandwagoneer.<br /><br />Yes, Her, why is she popular at all? Is it because she's everything that Obama is not? She is that. She's a woman, she's white, she speaks without thinking, she lives without thinking, and she works the media like Carrie Prejean works her..... See, I told you that my heart wasn't in it. I didn't even try to come up with an amusing euphemism for clitoris.<br /><br /> To compare the Divine One with Miss "Jesus says my implants are okay-and so are my fingers and this zuchini" is already a tired metaphor. They both are famous for the way people get famous these days, which is confusing to those who remember the old way.<br /><br />Not for excellence, but for getting on the fame merry-go-round through a series of embarassing failures, then not succumbing to the natural inclination to hide in the rec room til everyone forgets, but rather figuring out ways of not falling off. That is a talent in itself, albeit one that is practiced, for a shorter time periods, by the Fulbright Candidates who reveal their man-tits on the Jerry Springer Show.<br /><br />So to get minutes over your fifteen, the outrageous ways one must continue to present oneself in order to keep the cameras from finding other subjects, may just reveal a Savant-ish talent in our Gemini-like former beauty queens.<br /><br /> Because if either of them suddenly started acting reasonable; if Miss California Pussy Fingers suddenly went on a Church Mission to teach less advantaged Third World Women to be proficient in activities that would keep their hands occupied during the extended periods of time the male villagers were out hunting game (and keep her away from the TMZ Paps), or if the Rogueish One were to lock herself away in a room and begin to read all those books and newspapers she once claimed knowledge of, long enough to emerge with the ability to anwer a question involving a fact, well then, where would the entertainment value be in that?<br /><br /> No, our culture has had it with fame having anything to do with excellence or achievement or hard work. We like our celebrities to be train wrecks. It's so much more interesting, you know, ugly but you can't turn away. We like 'em big and stupid. Better for our self esteem too.<br /><br /> Look on the positive side. The fact that clown shows like these occupy our news time signals a return to pre-911 America, when it was all about OJ, Oval Office BJ's and Shark Attacks. Remember? We all had money then.<br /><br /> Even the attacks on Obama for bowing, or not bowing, or being a Commie, or a Nazi, have the elements of farce that we haven't experienced since a they tried to impeach that guy because of a dry cleaning issue.<br /><br /> Until someone takes a shot at him, of course. Anybody got the over-under on that one?<br /><br />Fame is some weird shit. And staying famous is so much easier when you don't have to waste valuable time practicing a talent or craft or reading and studying. Then all you have to do is to work on staying famous.<br /><br /> Paris Hilton is more famous than any Hollywood Actress, and the only skill I've seen her demonstrate would only rate a B+ on my scale. Tilt your head back Hon, you'll be able to go deeper.<br /><br /> It may be against the law to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater, but it sure gets everyone to notice you. Just ask me.<br /><br /> But there is a substantive similarity between the Killa from Wasilla and Miss Born-Again-Porn-Again.<br /><br /> They occupy a position vital to the continued self delusion that is a cornerstone of the ethos of "social conservatives". The reason for that name is because the Media that coined it did not want to alienate potential customers by calling them what I do.<br /><br />White Trash. Bohunks. Munyaks. Sky Jockeys. Renaissance Deniers. The folks who think the End is Near because the Democrats and Jews and Queers and Niggers have all gotten together to loose the plagues of Sodom on the Greatest Country the Giant White Man who lives in the Sky ever Created.<br /><br /> All the Evils of Society have been created by the Liberalism that made beating your kids illegal and all the other Commie-Based Nanny-State interferences that killed John Wayne and replaced him with Ryan Seacrest.<br /><br /> Yet all the while they Lament the moral slide to Perdition that they assume started with Alan Alda, this same John Hagy-watching demographic; squeezes out bastard children by the carload, produces all of our nations' methamphetimine, supplies every single actress in Porn (have you ever listened to them talk?-They ain't from the Upper West Side) and takes care of those in need of help in the States they control with the indifference that would drown them in the Tears of Their Savior, if He existed.<br /><br /> Denial is Mothers Milk to these Good People. Without it, they would have to admit what us Godless Liberals take for granted. That what you call Sin is fun, that we like it and it won't doom us. That it predates you belief system, and only became a problem when some power trippers needed a reason to market that system to help them get a handle on controlling some of your ancestors, the gullible of yore, and make a few bucks.<br /><br />It worked, just like Ring-Around-the-Collar started getting people to pay for extra for Wisk, a powdered detergent mixed with the magic ingredient of water.<br /><br /> It takes someone with Balls of Iron to sell nonsense like that. It takes someone who can deny the truth when everyone can see it on the JumboTron.<br /><br /> It takes the kind of person who can accuse Her opponents of moral laxity while Her knocked-up, unmarried, teenage daughter stands right behind her.<br /><br /> It takes someone who vetted her future son-in-law with the same diligence as She was and now blames him for making a living, just as She is, off the national Joke you both played on all of us. At least he didn't use a body double for his cash-in. I know, writing the book yourself would have taken away important "twitter-time".<br /><br /> It takes someone with "social conservative" version of Denial that the Neo-Cons use when extolling that fact that there hasn't been an attack since, uh, you know, uh, 2001.<br />Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the Play?<br /><br /> The best defense is more of everything that got you famous already. Meaning is meaningless when the lights are all on you. Work it Girl!<br /><br /> Lil' Eddie<br /> <br /> More wacky stuff like this on Morning Feed-Monday thru Friday on Gtownradio.com-on your Computer MachineEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-5363441918125681102009-11-14T09:09:00.002-05:002009-11-14T11:02:07.900-05:00King of all .........I hope you're all listening to my Innertube Radio program on Gtownradio.com<br />Morning Feed, only two weeks old, is already causing a stir. A prominent Philadelphia weekly newspaper is doing an article about me, and the program, and all my other interests.<br /><br />I have begun to have guests come on the air and that is going quite well. Perhaps some prominent Hillers would be interested in joining me.<br /><br /> For the first time since his demise, I have thought of Tom Fleming. I think he would have<br /> considered a guest shot on Morning Feed. It would have appealed to his playful side. I think he would have enjoyed himself and we would have had an interesting time discussing both non-controversial topics.... and the other kind. We could have discussed his racing career.<br /><br /> I once promised Tom that I would piss on his grave. He got a kick out of that. I spent a little time trying to find his present whereabouts in order to fulfill my pledge, without success, but, as time passes, so does my promise. Tom was wrong about a lot of things, but I'm gonna give him a pass. His most virulent attacks against me were so sudden and random, in between periods of affability, that I'm gonna chalk them up to the confusion and the sense of powerlessness that comes from the inability to master situations, both physical and intellectual, that he once could dominate.<br /><br /> I am often asked, "Why Chestnut Hill?". The easy answer is, write what you know. The secondary one-journalist division-is, outsiders can act as surrogates for an previously uninformed general public.<br /><br />Fish out of water viewpoints are easy. Ignorant optimism, followed by discovery, recognition, disgust, conflict, and resolution by the outsider author mirrors the journey his heretofore innocent reader takes.<br /><br /> But a sense of microcosmic recognition is also important in works such as this one. For, as I tell Hill Tales to folks who have no prior knowledge of the place, they respond in two ways.<br /><br />They are incredulous that the sort of culture, based on Apartheid- racial, moral,and political-exists within a Liberal, Multicultural, Northern City.<br /><br />They wonder how a handful, many from outside the neighborhood, and from outside the City, have taken control, without protest from an informed, local populous.<br /><br /> Some, without any economic incentives, are the most virulent in administering power over a neighborhood in which they do not live, or earn.<br /><br />And then there's Snowden. In a country where Global Warming and its' causes are an accepted concept to all save the most ridiculous Palinistas, the Hill's most powerful citizen, and the known perpetrator of offenses locally, owes his fortune to the most damaging, Earth destroying, workerer ravaging industrial process ever devised.<br /><br />When I tell the uninitiated of Snowdens' involvment in Strip Mining, and show them the statistics of coal disease and poverty in Mingo County West Virginia, where his operations lie, then show them his vacant Hill properties, his tax scams, and his racist, blackmailing signs on the sweet Avenue that he now controls through the election of his tenants, employees, friends and lackeys, these intelligent people shit in their pants.<br /><br /> In other communities this guy would be exposed, shunned, shut out, picketed. In the Hill, his possible arrival at functions is as anticipated and hoped for as a shaft of pure light emanating from Gods' Own Penis, piercing through the Clouds of Despair.<br /><br />But through the incredulity of my rapt listeners and readers, is the sense of recognition that they have heard this all before, writ larger in the socio-economics practiced in Washington and elsewhere. Some people are for sale, and all it takes is a guy with a checkbook and a boner for them to ask, "which hole?"<br /> <br />So, a cloistered subculture, like the Sopranos or the Mormons, coupled with the dance of money, pressure, and privilage buying off the greedy, threatened, and socially disadvantaged, is a mix of mystery and familiarity that is highly entertaining.<br /><br />I once asked Dottie Sheffield, amateur horticulturalist and recipient of Snowden Largesse, why she defended him so. She gave the mantra so often heard," He has done such wonderful restorations!" (Actually just a couple). I asked her if she had ever ridden on the Autobahn in Germany. I assumed the answer, just as I assumed the actual ethnic orgin of her familiy's last name.<br />"Yes I have, and it's wonderful" she replied.<br /> "It was built by Hitler, you know", I reponded.<br />"Well, good for Hitler", said Dottie.<br />"Thanks Dottie, I'll quote you on that" I replied.<br />And now I have. It didn't happen in some basement in Posse Comitatus Country, or a clandestine cross burning, but right here in Chestnut Hill.<br /><br />The stories that happen right under your nose are the ones that must be told-by you.<br /><br />Ed (I'll be giving out Richards' address and phone number on the Air- if my lawyer says it's OK) FeldmanEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-63024713920175989082009-11-06T11:40:00.003-05:002009-11-08T19:37:08.425-05:00I Pity the FoolPoor Greg Welsh. Poor Chestnut Hill Business Association. And Poor CHCA board. After years of throwing their weight around, pistol whipping their perceived enemies into submission, they finally have adversaries with enough pull and nerve and support to bitch slap them into their first defeat since we stopped them from firing Pete Mazzacarro.<br /><br />As I have reported so often, you don't need much to beat this bunch, just a little nerve , and sometimes a lawyer. And in a response from Greg that anyone could have forseen, he cried "foul."<br /><br />"It's a shame that the process that's been in place in Chestnut Hill for years.....has been usurped."<br /><br />That's right Greg, because your Process, of Real Estate Insiders and Business Owners who have made the Hill into the Bank Ridden Mausoleum that it is, that fall all over themselves to get at the Teats of Snowden, only to find them barren and then ask for seconds, then attack the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> as "negative" for having the temerity to report that John Capoferri, one of their own inner circle, is a felon who cheated his friends and the Hill businesses out of hundreds of thousands, is crumbling.<br /><br />Your Process allows all of this to happen, then tries to silence those who report it.<br /><br />Your Process serves only those involved in its perpetuation for their personal enrichment.<br /><br />Your Process ignores the Near Neighbors.<br /><br />Your process ignores Democracy.<br /><br />Now Democracy kicks your ass and you cry foul.<br /><br />Your use of the word "usurp" is so "Hilly" I wonder if if it's actually on loan from one of your ethnic betters.<br /><br />It was so much easier when all you had to do was get some Tool to shout "point of order" at a meeting when someone objected to your Process.<br /><br />It was so much easier when all you had to do was send a thug to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> to frighten the Help<br /><br />Now you have a Rival. The Chestnut Hill Residents Association. They can play your game and Win. They have Allies and Pull and Connections. And Lawyers.<br /><br />It won on Zoga, and now people are seeking its help in the Chestnut Hill College fight, rather than the CHCA's. That big sign you see coming into view reads " CHCA=IRRELEVANT"<br /><br />Snowden picking you as his Front man was a Mistake. You're not Hilly enough. The Jew part doesn't help.<br /><br />Walter Sullivan is seen as a Buffoon, and his wife as an embarrassment of Colossal Proportion.<br /><br />The CHCA has always done its dirty work behind closed doors.<br /><br />But now, with you and Kristina, two very un-Hill like personalities as its public face, more and more formerly disinterested people are beginning to become repelled. Kind of like with me only different.<br /><br />I once wrote that your personality was a type of which I was quite familiar. The pride in the ability to lie with a straight face. The egotistical combination of sly street kid and and savy businessman, the Sharpie, the Tony Curtis character in "Sweet Smell of Success," always able to fool the "straights."<br /><br />But now you're getting squeezed from two ends. Snowden is your JJ Hunsecker, the Burt Lancaster character from that film. He can buy and sell you, sees you as his tool and you both know it. You think you can play him, but with the differences in your respective holdings, whatever you can get from him is beneath his notice, and therefore your victory over the Shagetz negates any meaningful kvelling.<br /><br />And your act is just too Showy for the Protestants. And as for trying to fight the Democratic Machine; well, be my guest.<br /><br />The kicker is this. Greg, I think you're dirty. And all this attention is gonna bring an awful lot of light to bear on your other operations, in all your other pies, in all the other neighborhoods in which you operate. Remember bragging about it all to me before you started lying to me about your connection to Snowden and we stopped talking?<br /><br />Two years before Cappoferri went down, I exposed him. He was a Snowden lackey too. He's gonna get the big Nickel, at least.<br /><br />Chip Butler, same thing; A.) Snowden Bitch, B.) Feldman exposure, C.) Jailbird<br /><br />The Moyl can't save you. I'm on the case.<br /><br />Anyway, come on my <a href="http://gtownradio.com">Gtownradio.com</a> program, 9-10 AM, Mon-Fri and we'll be like Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Feuds are good for ratings. You can even sponsor the show. Any pub is good pub. And the station is right down from Takers. Remember? I know you do.<br /><br /> Ed (Morning Feed) Feldman<br /><br />PS.- Join the Chestnut Hill Residents Association. Don't Worry, I'm not in it and I don't come to meetings.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-74676357800211754882009-11-04T11:59:00.004-05:002009-11-06T10:02:31.539-05:00On the Air ....ED FELDMAN IS ON THE AIR... NO. HE'S ON THE INTERNET!<br /><br /> Gtownradio.com Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 10:00 AM<br /><br />Yes, kids-I now have a daily platform from which to expose all that I see as evil and hilarious and corrupt and stupid and obvious. Can you all guess who and what I'm talking about?<br /><br />Monday thru Friday from 9:00 to 10:00 AM, Ed Feldman, Furniture Guy, College Teacher, Writer, and Scourge of Idiots and Assholes Everywhere, will be heard over computers, I-Phones and other modern-day electronic Pacifiers on <a href="http://gtownradio.com/content/blogsection/44/119/">Gtownradio.com</a>.<br /><br />Now all the World can listen as I talk of Chestnut Hill and its cast of Wacky Characters. Richard, Dina, Greg, Walter and his Humunculus will be prominently displayed to the ears of everyone around the entire World with an internet connection. I'm gonna make you people famouser than ever.<br /><br /> Though links to my Furniture Guy Website, You-tube and Facebook, as well as my network of fans around the Globe, the Hill will be as well known as Lake Woebegone, or Mayberry, or Auchwitz.<br /><br />Of course the Hill will be just one subject for examination during my program, which delves into all my areas of expertise and opinion. Many Hillers may enjoy and even understand some of these other topics.<br /><br />Truth be told, the Hill story will have to be unfolded gradually to those listeners unfamiliar with our shared history.<br /><br />But once everyone been been brought up to speed, the fun will begin.<br /><br />To those of you who are prepared to lament, let paint a rosy picture.<br /><br />My intention is to help Hill businesses and the Hill itself by publicizing their unique qualities.<br /><br />Imagine new visitors to your establishments, asking questions like, "Is this where that Richard Snowden put up his Signs? He makes his money off Coal Mining in West Virginia and spends it on ...What?"<br /><br />Or "Is this the office where Peggy Hendry took credit for giving a Black Man a vacation day on Martin Luther Kings' Birthday?"<br /><br />Or "This is the Bank with the twenty foot photograph of a Restricted Country Club, right?"<br /><br />I am trying to help here. I may develop a Feldman-Style Tour of the Hill, like they do in North Jersey for the Sopranos. It could help.<br /><br />And serving Democracy is all part of it. Now, when I get wind of the latest CHCA scheme, I can announce it on my radio show, and when I tell people to come to the board meeting, who knows how many will show and from how far?<br /><br />Now to all those who think this will be one-sided, think again. I personally extend invitations to all those who I have mentioned, and to any others who feel the need to represent the Hill in any way to come on the program with me. The discussion will be cordial, the questions pointed, and the room small. So if you have the time, and the courage of what you probably still call your convictions, go to the <a href="http://gtownradio.com/content/blogsection/44/119/">Gtownradio.com</a> website and I will schedule a day for you.<br /><br />Wednesday will probably be reserved for local news, after the papers have gone to press.<br /><br />So Richard, call your Lawyers, it looks as if they now have a new assignment, listening to me every day. Walter, you can daydream about hitting me over a new medium. Greg, I'll be doing restaurant reviews.<br /><br />The show is called Morning Feed. <a href="http://gtownradio.com/content/blogsection/44/119/">Gtownradio.com</a> Monday thru Friday 9-10 AM, I play music too!<br /><br />I'll start posting the flyers soon. Then I'll take pictures of who rips them down.<br /><br />I told you I was in this for the long haul.<br /><br /> Ed (talk about your Morning Zoo) FeldmanEd Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-23094966209064617932009-11-03T10:56:00.004-05:002009-11-06T09:59:59.220-05:00Changes to Parking Rules and a Request to the Parking FoundationSince watching my car float away during Hurricane Katrina my wife and I had become hardcore supporters of public transportation. While she worked up in North Wales the 94 and the 134 got her to and from with limited issue (okay, there was the time the bus made the wrong turn on 309 and went 20 miles in the wrong direction getting her home at midnight instead of 7 pm as they had to wait for an escort to help them get back on track). We became fans of Philly CarShare until they eliminated the "no charge" limited use monthly plan. Then we moved to 19119 and I learned to despise the 23. Five times an hour is a big fat lie.<br /><br />In recent months it didn't matter if I got to the bus stop at 8:45am or 8:10am. I would be waiting until almost 9am for my ride to work. Growing tired of this I looked at my options and got a scooter. A moped. A little 50cc device that would send me up and down the Avenue at speeds that sometimes could reach 45mph. One of the nicest parts about this is that it is legally considered a bicycle. I could park on sidewalk (as long as I was in line with the buildings) and didn't have to fear ticket or towing.<br /><br />This all changed last week. I exit a business I had purchased a few things at to discover a parking ticket on my ride. $76?! Jeez. I check with the parking "code" and it states that I shouldn't have had any trouble or tickets with my vehicle. I speak to the PPA (oh what wonderful people) and they inform me that the laws have changed, but no tickets were to be written until Nov 4th 2009.<br /><br />Scooters will no longer be permitted to park on sidewalks in Philadelphia (NYC just began these regulations as well) and must be limited to the designated Scooter/Motorcycle parking spaces alloted by the city. The representative of the Philadelphia Parking Authority I spoke with yesterday informed me that parking a scooter in car spaces could, in some instances, result in a ticket - and fines would be higher for bikes at an expired car parking meter than an expired scooter/motorbike meter. She suggested I use the scooter parking lots on Market Street until I informed her I was looking to park in the Chestnut Hill section (there are already scooter spaces in Mt. Airy). <br /><br />So I ask the Parking Foundation to please add these spots. There are 11 registered scooter owners in 19118 and more in 19119 and 19038 (we have quite an online community and know about each other). We are already considered progressive as our vehicles cause less pollution, get better gas mileage (I get 90 miles per gallon) and descrease traffic congestion. We just need a place to park.reverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-64287987333252885902009-10-05T15:05:00.006-04:002009-10-08T20:01:49.887-04:00Avenue of Broken Dreamsby Ed (Broadway Baby) Feldman<br /><br />Fall at its' most iridescent. Some things change, while some stay the same. The foliage falls (don't say it) into the first category, with an anti-Al Gore chill making trees run up their yellow surrender flags. The Hill Fall for the Arts Festival falls into the latter, with a sameness so comforting to the Culturally Frozen and so stifling for anyone with a functioning memory of so many identical events.<br /><br /> But amidst the relentless sameness of the usual suspects' third rate trinkets and Kettle-Corn-Funnel-Cake-Carbo-Quaaludes, how many noticed that rarity of rarities, a New Hill Commercial Tenant?<br /><br /> Yes, in the old Express property, the shop girl's synthetic uniform supply company, now dwells a much more flamboyant purveyor of reasonably priced apparel.<br /><br /> Halloween Adventure, where all the Hillers with secret Super Hero and Fantasy Fetishes can now shop and, later, don their alter ego outfits in private. After the economics lesson, I'll start to match the local celebs with their costumes for Halloween, or Whatever. And you kids can all join in too!<br /><br /> Halloween Adventure is a store whose annual existence begins a few weeks before its eponymous Holiday, and ends, at the latest, after New Years, the better to supply Santa and Sexy Elf costumes during that time of year when the number of drunken revels increases the amount of casual sex with provocatively dressed co-workers and acquaintances by a factor of nine.<br /><br /> The store then vacates its location until the following September, with rare exceptions, like neighborhoods with high numbers of budget-minded tranvestites, with tastes for shoddy Chinese Exports. (That Rarest of Demographics).<br /><br /> Most every H. A. functions as Commercial-Squatter, Rent-Paying Bottom Feeders, who scavenge temporarily in vacant properties that have no hope of a viable, long term tenant.<br /><br />Keep your eyes open kids. Where have you seen H.A.'s? Half vacant Strip Malls, places where the Plant Shut Down, near where the guys stand and wait for someone to pick them up for yard work.<br /><br /> H.A.'s aren't signs that the Buzzards are circling, they ARE the buzzards.<br /><br /> Remember L'il Richie Snowden's Signs? The ones that advertised his vacant proprties as available for "Check Cashing, Discount Electronics, and Nail Salons? He meant those signs as a Racist Scare Tactic to punish the Hill for its' non-fealty to his Authority, its' questioning of his Grand Plans, and its' occasional criticism of his Middle Aged Tantrums and Tax Schemes.<br /><br /> But even I didn't think he meant to rent to tenants who would, in his words, "turn Chestnut Hill into a Ghetto." After all, why would His Whiteness live in the most pigmentally-challenged neighborhood in Philadelphia if he wanted to hear car radios blaring something with a bass line?<br /><br />But even without any real attempt at rental eugenics by Strip Mine Dick, the first line has just been crossed.<br /><br />All those years of his self-enforced vacancies, of renting to banks but not restaurants, of antique and gimcrack stores that depended on visitors for survival, while commodities for residents were bought elsewhere.<br /><br /> The Panic by the weak Hill Biz crowd that followed Dirty-Coal Boy to board autonomy should have told you something. If they weren't desparate, their real opinions of him would have kept them home, and busy behind their counters. Now you can see the daily, physical manifestation in all its Dracula-like Horror: Halloween Adventure = Depressed Area.<br /><br /> All the Kettle Korn in the World won't help.<br /><br /> 'Til next time, send in your suggestions for Costume Selection for Your Favorite Hillers. I'll have mine.<br /><br />And More Fall Festival Follies with Ed, Rob Remus, Sanjiv Jain, the Hillers who Shun. Like the Amish but with Cable.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-62353313431078831092009-09-29T13:20:00.003-04:002009-09-30T14:36:14.836-04:00Job Search/What Might Have Been<span style="font-weight: bold;">PART ONE</span><br /><br />Hey kids, I just read Foghorn Sullivan's latest vomit-on -the -page in the Local, about riding his scooter to the U.N. if it had been built in Andorra, a bet on par with his wife being able to ride his Presidency to any job involving interaction with Humans.<br /><br /> I would have sold my mother to Hamas to see Walter trying to putt-putt his two hundred and eighty five pounds of horseshit up Bells Mills Road. Hey Walter, dream big, if you can repeal Newtons' Laws, maybe you can get Kristina out of the house.<br /><br /> We must all be thankful for the U.N. opting for the East Side. For if Walter had ever brought the Beast with him to hear the General Assembly, she might have replicated what the board let her spew at the meeting last week. And we'd now be living in a post-World War III landscape of styrofoam and cockroaches, which means Kristina would still be alive.<br /><br /> I also loved his congratulating Chestnut Grill/Snowden Bitch Greg Welsh's failure at getting a Civil War Museum built locally, another safe bet. Its' patrons would have fit the Demographic of the Regular Hill Shopper perfectly, both groups having been dead for twenty five years.<br /><br /> Is Greg sliding you some free Made-in-Omaha Mozzerella sticks for free, at least? Maybe he could hire Kristina as a Maitre D'esse for his Applebees'-on -the -Avenue. It would be like when Rickles worked the lounge at the Sahara, only with less charm, and more hair.<br /><br /> I like helping the Handicapped as much as the next guy (unless the next guy lives in the Hill), but Pete's place in Heaven is already assured for having put up with Asshole Brigade for so long. He doesn't have to lobby further by letting Walters' seepage use up valuable wood pulp.<br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">PART TWO </span><br /> <br /> I have found another reason that Walter was so simpatico with settling the Rob Remus non-lawsuit. It seems Walter is experienced in collecting money from his neighbors in this manner. He sued the Venetian Club and collected a generous five figure settlement. I'll get the exact dollar amount and the details soon.<br /><br /> Walter, that was your last chance-a new life with your winnings, the flat, tropical terrain of the Gulf Coast or Sunny Scottsdale for your Scooter, and an escape from the relentless shrieking.<br /><br /> She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.<br /><br />The settlement would have been your condo down payment. And then the Social security would have kicked in. You could have chased a few ambulances. Down there, there's one going by every few seconds. Old folks would have hired you off your voice and physical stature alone. Your expertise wouldn't even have mattered. You could have fooled everyone.<br /><br /> She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.<br /><br /> In those climes, you could have started over. Your Manner and that Voice would have made you an Exotique-Sexy Widows, Jewesses, Southern Belles, would have fallen under the spell of your melifluous tones. Spring Training Games, Early Bird Specials, the Moonlight. Easy Pickins', my Friend<br /><br /> She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.<br /><br />Now you're stuck in the Stenton Cell Block with someone so embarrassing that the people who put you on the Throne want the ground to open up and swallow her every time she pries herself out of the chair to speak.<br /><br />Even Tolis Vardakis, one of the most reliable tools of the CHCA Power Freak Coalition, called "Point of Order" at her, and he's on her side. It was the first time the Ex-Puppet ever did that to an Ally.<br /><br /> She would have awakened one day and you would have been gone.<br /><br /> My Guess is that someone has already spoken to you about Her. But it won't help. She's Unstoppable. I guess the folks who wrote about my antics in the Local will be Publicly Silent on this matter.<br /><br /> You had your Chance, Walter. It's too late for you now. But I can help. You can take it out on me. I enjoy it.<br /><br /> She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-58631858184050862362009-09-28T10:25:00.005-04:002009-09-28T11:09:23.610-04:00A Yom Kippur Statement and PrayerAs spokesman for the Chosen People, I hereby disavow any affiliation, any shared values, any mutual heritage, any common blood or DNA, with the shrieking lump of anthropomorphic tissue known as Kristina Sullivan.<br /><br />The reason for this statement is threefold. The first is obvious. Any linkage between the aforementioned Creature brings shame on all of us.<br /><br /> Globally, each time the Thing speaks, the Earths' rotation is altered slightly by so many bodies, all over the Planet, spinning in so many graves, that the counter-gyroscopic effect cannot be mitigated for hours. This can only exacerbate the Climate Change Crisis.<br /><br /> More personally, by this statement I hope to guarantee that, if Political winds change, and the Cattle Cars return for us, there is no chance that I would ever have to experience the horror of sharing life in a Concentration Camp with the aforementioned Beast. That would make my stay unendurable.<br /><br /> Please God, let those who wish harm on us not witness her, for if they do, it shall surely bring us misery and pain. Amen.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-63257034226309107792009-09-28T08:55:00.003-04:002009-09-28T10:24:39.358-04:00Jewstradamus Nails Another OneThe repeated dull thump. The unremitting pain, that could be stopped, if only the attempt were made to confront the offense. If only those who might do so, would do so. But the compact of silence is so strongly inbred that breaking it would deny the strength of the tradition that made us what we are.<br /><br /> We discuss the issues of the world in the abstract, and so many of us come down on the side of justice, of the common good. But when confronted with it in our lives, under circumstances that we could address and rectify, we fall silent. This inaction explains everything; multiplied by millions, it creates the world we lament, but that we create, by the inaction of our own lives.<br /> We speak out against the evil on pages, in newspapers, but when we have the opportunity to look into its' eyes and say "no", we shrink.<br /><br /> "What can we do?" We hear it every day. A letter to the President? A shout from the rooftop? "I'm only one person."<br /><br /> Some buy a Prius to combat global warming. Some contribute to the ACLU to support the first Amendment.<br /><br /> But the triumph of greed, of arrogance, of disregard for human rights and human life must be met every time you see it, only then do we have a chance.<br /><br />That is why I do what I do. It might just be one twig in the wheel of evils' progress, but what if were a branch? What if you helped? What would you lose? And what would you gain?<br /> If you knew that the Government was trying to tell your Newspaper what to write, and who it could print, what would you think? If Cheyney had hung around the Washington Post, instead of the CIA, and exerted his influence there, what would you think? More importantly, what would you do?<br /><br /> What could you do? You couldn't do much, after all, you're here, and they're there. But what if you could walk in on your way home from shopping and, without confronting security or even taking an elevator, give support?<br /><br />What if you could stroll into the Senate and confront someone who was doing wrong, and stop them? What if you had the right to?<br /><br /> What if you knew where the person who sells land for strip mining lived? What if you knew where that man went on the third Thursday of every month? What if you knew where he would be , what he owned, and what he was trying to use his money for?<br /><br />What if you could tell him what you think of him to his face?<br /><br />On September first, on these pages, I wrote that those "reasonable" people who voted for Rob Remus' payment for a threatened lawsuit against the Local had not thought their actions out. They had told me they did it to put the past behind them. I told them that it would only make things worse.<br /><br /> Those same people were on the losing side of a CHCA board vote to put Rob on the CHCA Budget and Finnance Committee, that oversees the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local's</span> budget. The reasonable people spoke out against his appointment, stating the obvious, that anyone who had tried to obtain money from the Local under such circumstances would not be a proper steward for its' future finances.<br /> These people were naive, and were played by the board. Their sense of fair play was a detriment in confrontations with those who do not share their values. They have been taught in the abstract by others who have no experience with the types of people they now confront.<br /><br /> I told them that they blew it when they gave Rob the money. Their "reasonableness," their desire to make a new beginning for the board was interpreted as nothing more or less than weakness, and as license by those who wish to do what we have now all seen them do.<br /><br /> It took three weeks to prove my theory. Their "new beginning" will bring about the end.<br /> The only time that they were stopped is when thirty people in the audience refused to let them fire the editor of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span>. They never tried that again. Their tactics have changed, and I have predicted each one. Starve the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span>, and deprive them of any staff that might write anything they don't want you to know about. Then all that would be left to print is what they are fed by those who have created a newspaper of, by, and for the CHCA board and businesses that now control the board.<br /><br /> A partnership of Richard Snowden, small time Hill businesses, and the leftover old, lonely board members have done this.<br /><br /> But they were helped by those who, while telling me they thought Rob Remus and Dina Hitchcock were psychopaths, voted to give him money.<br /><br />What kind of people give money to psychopaths? And what kind of people confront wrong when they see it when they share a room with it? And what kind of people do nothing?Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-21595670043970319612009-09-27T21:22:00.011-04:002009-09-30T14:22:52.150-04:00The Howling"Shoot me if I ever go to another CHCA meeting!" I told my wife. This was last Thursday, after the opening of the Fall/Winter Board Follies for 2009--10, held, strangely, at St. Paul's instead of in the Library.<br /><br />I hadn't gone for awhile, but I'd heard Hitchcock and her goons were tightening the noose on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> further by nominating Mark Keintz and Rob Remus to the Budget and Finance Committee. These guys made up the Ad Hoc Committee (along with Hitchcock) from last year, that pushed for Jimmy Pack's firing; pushed for Pete Mazzaccaro's firing; cut Sonia Leounes's ad sales commissions in half, and after Keintz had abruptly resigned as Treasurer, installed David Mansfield to replace him.<br /><br />Mansfield, a fiscal conservative who swept in with the Positively Chestnut Hill gang last Spring, is a partner to out-of-his-depth associate publisher Larry Hochberger, in radically altering fiscal mechanics at the CHCA. They've decided to cut $200,000 out of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local's</span> budget, and to facilitate the bleeding, got Keintzy to shove off. Now they've brought him back by appointing him to Budget and Finance, along with Remus, whom they've similarly rewarded for being a good soldier by paying him $3500 for not suing them last winter -- though his attorney hadn't moved to do so! And, I guess, for hanging in through all the <span style="font-style: italic;">sturm und drang</span>.<br /><br />Anyway, when I got to the Library, where most meetings happen, it was dark. A bunch of people were milling around, slapping at mosquitos and cursing in the moist weather.<br /><br />"Didja see [Walter] Sullivan?" demanded one guy I didn't recognize. "He forgot to notify the Library Manager that we were coming, so she locked up and went home!"<br /><br />"Yeah", said his friend. "So then Foghorn wanted to hold the meeting right there on the steps!"<br /><br />"Thinking all the time!" said the first guy.<br /><br />Finally somebody said he had a key to St. Paul's, so we hump over there. And the Board began its usual obfuscations. Hours of sliding around on zoning matters left over from the 8/27 meeting, followed by stalling on former President Ron Recko's questions on why Mansfield, Hochberger and Hitchcock seemed so set on forcing the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> to pay rent for its office space, and repay a loan from the Trustees the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> incurred in 2006, during Recko's presidency, for a three-month printing bill that was in arrears.<br /><br />"How was it that Jean Hemphill 'forgave' $180,000 for Maxine Dornemann [during her administration, 2005-6] , but nothing can be done for the paper during these tough times?" Recko wondered.<br /><br />At which point a weird howling began from one side of St. Paul's . It was Christine Sullivan, Walter's wife, who despite the humidity, seemed strangely furry and werewolfian: <span style="font-style: italic;">"OOooohhh!"</span> she howled, dragging it out and pointing a long finger at Recko. "I haven't forgotten <span style="font-style: italic;">yoouuuh!</span> We'll get to <span style="font-style: italic;">youuuh !!</span> But FIRST I wanna know what's going on with Mr. Hochberger, here! It's put-up or shut-up time for <span style="font-style: italic;">yoouuhh</span>, buddy! What happened to all your grand <span style="font-style: italic;">pllaaanns and proomisses??</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">OoohWOOooh!</span>"<br /><br />Recko tried to get things back on track, but was overwhelmed by Mrs. Sullivan's <span style="font-style: italic;">Whhoooing!</span> He bolted for the door. Former president Tolis Vardakis, who'd been trying to interrupt Recko's line of questioning on debt relief, yelling "Point of order!", now turned to Mrs. Sullivan, but was howled down, too. "<span style="font-style: italic;">RRrrWhooor!!</span>" she snarled, adding some pointed sharps to her flats, that sounded really dangerous. People started rushing the exits . . . I'd seen the battles over Lombardi, Sturdivant and Mishak, I remember the Walsh surgery unpleasantness, the 2008 election thefts . . . but this <span style="font-style: italic;">lycanthropy</span> seemed beyond the pale . . . I headed for my Chevy, too.<br /><br />"Never again!" I told my long-suffering wife, after I'd locked the door.<br /><br />"At least next time, go armed," she said dryly.<br /><br />-- Charlie PartanaUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-63326434079248789492009-09-25T10:06:00.003-04:002009-09-25T10:10:28.803-04:00overheard on the ave...from one of the charming volunteers at the <em>bird in hand</em>:<br /><br /><blockquote>i see someone approved strapping garbage to lamp posts along the avenue.</blockquote><br />gotta love those ladies. i didn't know what she was talking about until i went and looked. i wouldn't call it garbage as much as i would call it flammable.reverend chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13393177207006602065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-78879124893386172692009-09-24T16:25:00.001-04:002009-09-24T16:27:01.573-04:00An Error Occured...Note to Jeremiade.<br /><br />Hit the wrong key when saving comments and two of yours were deleted. Sorry.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-41268252301749754372009-09-17T21:28:00.009-04:002009-09-21T15:09:36.465-04:00High Anxiety<span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIUkwYSlw0y7ipqWZxrqUtmhJOU43OFT2CYuOmZyYWM53ck3PJ_YfP1GZSA9aZX-BFphYVbVOPe5LuzbLJ6aqXtpPvPXNxsvuqpzVj10bi0Bdkkrz8yXEJh5YYclyGKmgjz_LhQ/s1600-h/maddog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIUkwYSlw0y7ipqWZxrqUtmhJOU43OFT2CYuOmZyYWM53ck3PJ_YfP1GZSA9aZX-BFphYVbVOPe5LuzbLJ6aqXtpPvPXNxsvuqpzVj10bi0Bdkkrz8yXEJh5YYclyGKmgjz_LhQ/s320/maddog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358723859562785218" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Open Note to Walter Sullivan</span><br /><br />Since I've been banned from corresponding with the <i>Local </i> in any form, I'm replying here, on home turf, to your current opinion piece in that paper.<br /><br />We haven't yet reached the point in the U.S. where strongly-held opinions need to be phrased like legal torts to prevent their being described as raising the question of "malice".<br /><br />In the instance you cite, I was characterizing a much rougher description, reported and alleged to me, which I took care not to repeat literally, precisely because I wanted to avoid malice, and slander.<br /><br />When we reach that point where journalists all have to write like lawyers, I expect you'll call a special session of the Exec Committee, & break out the whiskey and firecrackers.<br /><br />Until then, I'm sticking with the First Amendment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">John Lombardi</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-13069475379687880182009-09-08T13:14:00.003-04:002009-09-09T00:14:21.424-04:00High Anxiety<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIUkwYSlw0y7ipqWZxrqUtmhJOU43OFT2CYuOmZyYWM53ck3PJ_YfP1GZSA9aZX-BFphYVbVOPe5LuzbLJ6aqXtpPvPXNxsvuqpzVj10bi0Bdkkrz8yXEJh5YYclyGKmgjz_LhQ/s1600-h/maddog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIUkwYSlw0y7ipqWZxrqUtmhJOU43OFT2CYuOmZyYWM53ck3PJ_YfP1GZSA9aZX-BFphYVbVOPe5LuzbLJ6aqXtpPvPXNxsvuqpzVj10bi0Bdkkrz8yXEJh5YYclyGKmgjz_LhQ/s320/maddog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358723859562785218" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notes on <span style="font-style: italic;">Shtick</span></span></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">by John Lombardi</span><br /><br /><br />Since Fast Eddie Feldman has seen fit to advise Jim Foster and myself on how to write our columns, I figured I'd return the favor, a little belatedly. That's because he's begun operating like a northern snakehead now, filing practically all the posts on the blog, answering most of the comments too, circling back on his own instructions about avoiding national politics and pop culture and so on, instead of sticking to the crucial backstage news of CHCA goofiness that he finally admits the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> isn't providing . . .<br /><br />For you non-fishermen out there, snakeheads are awful fish from Southeast Asia that somehow got into Florida waterways and ate all the other fish out of their streams, then wriggled into more streams -- crossing land to do it, and sometimes dying in the attempt! -- just because they were frenzy-eaters, like running blues. Hogs, really, "<span style="font-style: italic;">chozzers</span>" I'm told it's pronounced in Yiddish, though FEF may correct me as a mere goy who has no business using Jewish idiom . . .<br /><br />In all candor I should report that I paid for Eddie's roundtrip air-ticket from Berkeley last winter, when I thought there was still a chance to fight the Exec Committee's slow strangulation of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span>. The remnants of the old Lawrence Walsh/Ron Recko gang were all worked up about the Jimmy Pack firing and the move to get rid of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local's</span> "Editor" -- even though I kept writing that he'd copped out shortly after heroically criticizing the Spring 2008 election. I thought Ed might juice him up again if he was around, yelling and sweating in the old Jerry Rubin/Ira Einhorn (pre-murder conviction) mode. It didn't work out that way.<br /><br />There was a strong movement involving the most conservative folks in the CHCA, the CHBA, and, it developed as the winter slogged into pre-election spring, a concerted effort by Richard Snowden to unify the "pro-business", anti-journalism crowd -- who'd felt since my day (in 2000-1), that any sort of imaginative reporting should be shunned the way the sparrow shuns the hawk -- "negative" writing, all that blood, barking dogs, <span style="font-style: italic;">yechhh</span> . . .<br /><br />The provincialism of Chestnut Hill still amazes me sometimes. The sheer old-fashioned pettiness, love of gossip, religiosity -- though nearly all the old ladies whom I called "the Lloydettes" are gone now: Marie Jones, Helen Moak, Nancy Hubby and Mary Anna Ross (Cowper I believe she was called, in the end?) . . . blaming the ills of the Hill on rabble like me, Fast Eddie, Recko -- ethnics coming in and trying to change the old White Mischief colonial traditions of pointlessly long board meetings, <span style="font-style: italic;">Local</span> Management meetings (as they were then called), and all the other uncoordinated groups treading on each others' toes, changing regimes annually, so that no courses of action were sustainable -- dense numbers of dysfunctional suburbanites with unhappy home lives barking at each other for three and four hours at a shot, then heading for Campbell's to slosh some beer and bourbon over the whole mess and keep on trucking . . .<br /><br />Market forces are what undid the Hill, people. The Germantown Avenue Bridge repair, which lasted for years, changing Montgomery County shopping patterns by interrupting old commuter habits of visiting the "Village" between the Top of the Hill and the flower market near the Mt. Airy line, for cheese, hardware, shoe repair, antiques, fine prints, dry cleaning, haircuts, Caruso's, lovely, 19th century strolls . . . Given the Malling of America & Philly taxes, real estate rental along the Avenue grew too steep for realistic profit-making, and psuedo-businessmen like Snowden, Sanjiv Jain and Rob Remus screwed things up further, leaving empty storefronts (for tax writeoffs) that are beginning to resemble the Yosemite Gold Rush ghost-towns of the Sierra Nevada. And there is racial <span style="font-style: italic;">liebesraum</span>--pushing from Germantown proper and the North Philly ghetto, too, which some Hillers are too hypocritical to talk about . . .<br /><br />But what saddens me is the journalistic waste. The Hill and surrounding communities are full of smart readers with taste and vision who aren't members of, say, Carolyn Hausserman's former cast-iron committees, or the CHCA at all. No one's addressing them. They're not listening to foolishness like the <span style="font-style: italic;">Local's</span> happy reports about how swell everything is; or Fast Eddie's baroque <span style="font-style: italic;">shtick</span> on Snowden's "master plan" to force everyone else out of the picture so that he can build condos in the Hill parking lots, or start soft coal strip-mining operations in Pastorius Park.<br /><br />The Hill's ideal readers know that Snowden, for one, is no real threat. He's just a rich dilletante. What corporation would employ a guy who buys buildings as tax writeoffs on a permanent basis? What's the profit margin there, bro? But Ed knits & purls this conspiracy stuff -- adapted from Lloyd Wells's old obsessions, by the way -- like a vaudeville trouper. His themes are Snowden -- about whom he hopes to write a book, without, apparently, doing any real research (if he'd just read the old <span style="font-style: italic;">Inky</span> series on S's Germantown misadventures before he even got to the Hill, FEF would realize how futile a project that is, saleswise) ; race -- though he always leaves crime out; and character assassination -- he was recently sadistic on Len Lear and Walter Sullivan, just because he thinks they're vulnerable. And smarmy sex -- to prove, I guess, what a naughty boy he is: here's what he had to say about Rob Remus in "Curiouser & Curiouser" in this space, August 30:<br /><br />"So Rob, who once told a gay man that he wanted to insert a body part into his body [sic], now offers, then denies, access to his children to me for some reason. He dangled his kids in front of me for a reason I can't even imagine."<br /><br />Sure you can, FEF. It's just sick <span style="font-style: italic;">shtick</span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-24988073669281419412009-09-07T17:00:00.005-04:002009-09-09T23:05:05.547-04:00Live on Tape This Weekend...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://plebo.org/blog/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 390px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__HkVTaQnlgI/Sqf91iWvdCI/AAAAAAAAADs/pDvJuCJ6vdU/s400/recording.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379547376114431010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">This unabashed promo brought to you by Waylaid Pilgrim on behalf of Rev. Chris.</span><br /><br />It's Beatles Night this Saturday. The Reverend will be performing solo from 6 to 9 PM with the band joining him afterwards.<br /><br />The show takes place at the Tavern on the Hill, 8636 Germantown Avenue, at the very top of Chestnut Hill.<br /><br />And don't forget to tip the staff.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19100133.post-74791297076962018382009-09-06T09:17:00.003-04:002009-09-06T16:08:38.617-04:00Run for the Causeby Coach Ed<br />It's the weekend, so I'll get off Richie and his board for a while. (All right -you in the back-stop giggling) And talk a little sports-and politics-and race-My Spicy Triple Delight.<br /><br /> Since everyone has been talking about the Vickster (and I have given him Dina Hitchcock's phone number), I won't. Instead I will compare two figures and their shared problem, Donovan McNabb and Barack Obama.<br /><br /> They share some obvious common attributes; they're black, they're smart, they've been successful, and they have had the hopes of many piled on top of them.<br /><br /> But how they respond to their mix of attributes, both natural and acquired, and how Philadelphia and America responds to their response is the subject for this fine, soft, September day.<br /><br /> Responding to stereotypes is not ignoring them, it's acknowledging them. It's giving them credence. And that's what both of them have done, to their own, and our, detriment.<br /><br /> In the case if Donovan, it boiled down to the word, "athlete". Many of us would love to have that word used to describe us, even once. Alas, I never get to be called that, outside of my bed. But to many, it's just a euphemism, describing a "natural" talent, rather than expertise gained through work.<br /><br /> To many, it's a way to criticize someones' intellect by by praising their physique.<br /><br /> To many it's just another way of saying that they sure can run fast and jump high, and sing and dance.<br /><br /> Donovan knows this, and it had always eaten at him. If I were a racist, I would say that his guilt about this issue makes him seem not only white, but jewish.<br /><br /> So Donovan wants to prove he's not this stereotype of a talented but uncerebral black athlete, and has resisted using a part of his game that, while feeding into that stereotype, would improve his chances, and his teams chances for success.<br /><br /> Donovan doesn't like to run. I must acknowledge an unsolved mystery here. Perhaps Andy Reid is the one who does not allow this. His pass-first offense may indicate a general reluctance in this area. But all the other trickery that I have seen in this offense, including Vick's addition, seems to preclude this possibility.<br /><br /> And all that has been said on this subject, without it actually being said, leads me to the conclusion that Donovan thinks that running brands him as the kind of "natural', "gifted" player that is just means something else, the word we all know.<br /><br /> Vicks' addition may be the validation of the thesis, that now, Andy has someone who doesn't mind the label.<br /><br /> And over Donovan's shoulder has always been the specter of Randall Cunningham. If some of us don't remember, Donovan does. A better athlete than Donovan ever was, but a worse quarterback. But while the most racist fans probably always blamed Randall's "athleticism" for zero Super Bowl appearances, it was another non-athletic aspect of his game that hampered him, and his team.<br /><br /> Randall was Goofy. And Lazy. In preparation and during the game, he didn't take the time to see the situation clearly and react properly. And often he just plain didn't follow the plays called, even before they broke down. Making his runs necessary. And Vick was the same way.<br /><br /> As I write about a man being lazy who is also black, I think about what that sounds like, and I pause. That pause is a guilty reaction to the racist stereotype that I know exists. Some may be angered by the "lazy" remark. Some may anger over my guilty pause. Both sides of the story are created by the original dynamic.<br /><br /> But since every attribute and every color of person can intersect, that guilt must be overcome by the logic of that knowledge.<br /><br /> Randall was lazy and nutty, Donovan is neither. Both are black. Only two kinds of people draw any other lines between those attributes. Racists and people afraid of the stereotypes drawn by racists.<br /> Fear of stereotyping exhibited by a guy who isn't afraid of Brian Urlacher just makes me more facinated by the human psyche than ever. And by the power of cultural indoctrination and the responses to it. Donovans intellectual fear is proof that he is thinking a little too much.<br /><br /> The ironic part has always been the way intellect and athleticism could have co-existed in the Eagles offense. If a running play would have been called for Donovan in the first quarter of every game, then the threat of it would have been as effective as it being repeated. That would have been the cerebral way of using athleticism to the teams advantage. That it was never utilized that way makes me think the dumb guy is the one with the headset.<br /><br />Fear of what certain people might think or say has similarly paralyzed our chief executive. So locked into being reasonable, bi-partisan, and non-threatening, he has ceded the field to those with no such baggage.<br /><br /> Fear of being labeled radical has never been a right wing one. They've been that way, in or out of power. And to head off any possibility of balanced political epithet response (BPER), the right has cleverly begun to call the left both communist AND fascist, leaving us with nothing left to call them.<br /><br /> The response doesn't have to be emotional, it can be factual. Since 1968, Ku Klux Klan members, when they vote, vote Republican. Since 1968,The Aryan Nation, when they vote, vote Republican. Red State hate crimes are ten times the number of Blue States.<br /><br /> But when the right brings guns to public meetings, they just call out John Wayne's name, and all is forgiven. The last left wing group to bring guns to a public meeting were the Black Panthers. Who were the same color as the president. And so, just like Donovan, in order to give no one any reason to think he has anything in common with THOSE black men, the President tries to be more reasonable than any republican has ever thought of being.<br /><br /> It's a very noble pursuit. The only problem is, it has never worked, and it won't work now. They call him every name they can think of, except that one they really want to use. If he fought back, hard and dirty, could it get any worse? Could he get any less votes then they give him now? He has nothing to gain from this style, except their contempt and our collective failure.<br /><br /> Munich and Chamberlain"s appeasement has been used more than Larry Craig's ass. Why don't the dems ever think of the analogy in getting domestic policy passed? The last dem that used his balls outside of an interns' mouth was LBJ, and all we got was medicare and the voting rights act. If he would have put them in dry dock overseas, he would be as deified by dems as that orange haired alzheimer tool of orange county is now.<br /><br /> But Barry is afraid of the stereotype. Even as his tiny enforcer, Rahm-son-of-terrorist, lets Israel be as ballsy as they want to be (I guess the palestinians can't get into any town meetings), he tells the "radicals" of his own party to calm down.<br /><br /> So Barry, stay in the pocket and don't run, be reasonable, but know that it doesn't work when the other side doesn't play by the same rules. And just like Donovan, who has lost a step, it's probably too late. It will just seem vindictive if you start now. No super bowl and no health care. Because two black men were afraid of what the whites would think of them. The freudian tail end of racism coming back to destroy those who thought they had overcome.Ed Feldmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03880514307060904688noreply@blogger.com0