Who Needs a House Out in Hackensack?

"Life's just a cocktail party on the street." From "Shattered" by The Rolling Stones

Besides the premium subscription channels from HBO and Spectrum TV Choice, my Roku streamer provides many free apps. Filmrise, Crackle, Tubi, Pluto TV, and the eponymous Roku Channel. Pluto TV has live Bloomberg broadcasting 24/7 which compliments CNBC coverage, plus, they transmit on the weekend. I like that. Although there are commercial breaks, all feature free movies. Grew up with commercials, so it isn't an issue, but the uninterrupted films on Turner Classic Movies are much more enjoyable. Looking for something to watch last month, I came across 1984's The Pope of Greenwich Village starring Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, and Daryl Hannah. I lived in Manhattan in 1984, so I streamed it.

Although it was filmed in real time, it comes off as a period piece now. After all, 35 years have passed. The cars, clothes, and absence of cellphones remind you of days gone by. Like the title suggests, it takes place in the East Village, and conjured up memories of my old neighborhood, the Upper West Side before gentrification. I lived a few blocks west of The Dakota where John Lennon was shot, between Broadway and West End Avenue. The old Needle Park area, but had been cleaned up substantially since the early 70's when they filmed Panic in Needle Park. Al Pacino's first featured role. Lived in a hotel converted to apartments and slept on a couch in the living room. My roommate had the bedroom with his girlfriend. He's been my friend since junior high school, and still is to this day.

Manhattan was gritty. Times Square wasn't the Main Street, U.S.A. it's become. It was like a scene from HBO's The Deuce. Strip Clubs, Peep Shows, Three-card Monte scams along with narcotics flowing. You'd walk to work, and street dealers would come at you: "Loose joints. Loose joints. You walk by, you don't get high. You buy three, you get one free.". Disney took over, and along with the Giuliani Administration, cleaned things up. The last time I walked through Times Square, I was en route to Lincoln Center to see Laura Benanti in the revival of My Fair Lady. Beautiful voice. A set of pipes like Julie Andrews.

An exciting time in my life. Out of college. Out of Ithaca. Out of my head. Plus, wasn't in the suburbs of New Jersey. No bridge and tunnel crowd. My first year post graduation, I lived in The Garden State, Boonton and Budd Lake. My life revolved around my job and the malls. Calling home was expensive. AT&T would take you to the cleaners. No unlimited talk, text, and data plans. You spent a half hour on a landline, it cost you about a week's salary. I wrote letters and lived by my wits. It was an adjustment.

“To be is to do” - Socrates.
“To do is to be” - Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do” - Frank Sinatra.

Kurt Vonnegut snatched that phrase from graffiti in bathroom stalls. I read a lot of Vonnegut while living in Manhattan. He struggled for almost thirty years until publishing his sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. He made a fortune after it went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. I enjoyed the book and the movie adaptation. Like the old hitchhikers credo: "Ass, gas or grass, nobody rides for free.".

I get a lot of unsolicited emails from LinkedIn these days. Job postings for freelancers, primarily in Manhattan. Wouldn't want to live there now. Too expensive unless you're loaded. It all started when I applied for a personal finance reporter position at Yahoo!Finance. Sent in my résumé via LinkedIn Easy Apply. At sixty years old, you don't expect to hear back, especially with gaping holes in your employment history. Writing screenplays takes a lot of time, and oftentimes in my youth, I'd opt to write instead of work. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Anyway, my inbox is barraged with job postings. Most I'm not interested in.

LinkedIn is a subsidiary of Microsoft now. Often confuse founder Reid Hoffman with Reed Hastings, another forward thinker who started Netflix. Talk about comebacks. Microsoft was left for dead after the PC market ground to a halt. They missed the boat on wireless, too. Although Steve Ballmer laid the foundation for Microsoft's resurrection, current CEO Satya Nadella has been instrumental in leading the charge back to exalted status. Microsoft's foray into cloud computing goes mano-a-mano with Amazon Web Services. Nadella made close to $26,000,000 in total compensation last year. The median household income in the United States is $61,000. And you wonder why people are so angry.