Hot Tuna Rocks TLV

Last Wednesday, December 22, on the day before Jorma Kaukonen's 70th birthday, Hot Tuna played at Reading 3, a club at the north end of the Tel Aviv Port. Standing in front of the stage, I was very happy to know that Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady still rock and we are still not worthy.

I'm from the 60's and one of the greatest bands of that era was the Jefferson Airplane. Of all the guitar heroes ever to play The Music, you can count on one hand the ones who can play with Jorma (and that's without additional fingers from drug-induced retention of vision). The man hardly moves while his fingers create cascades of complex riffs, teasing dozens of notes out of a single position on the guitar neck with those luxurious bends.

Jorma's life long friend and bassist, Jack Casady, is a show unto himself. I learned over 40 years ago that you have to get up close to the stage at an Airplane or Hot Tuna concert so you can watch Jack's bouncing eyebrows and facial expressions, accompanied by his talking or singing, Just when you think he's lost in his trance, Jack strides to the edge of the stage, making eye contact with the audience and letting us all in on the cosmic joke.

The magic underlying The Duke Ellington Orchestra was that he kept the same players together for 25 or 30 years at a time. Musicians who play together for long stretches just know, without looking or speaking, what their band mates are going to improvise in the next instant. Improvised riffs played by masters who still really love what they're playing sound spontaneous and fresh even though you may have heard pieces of them before. (Hey, even Beethoven would recycle themes and phrases.) Whether Ellington wanted to experiment with his avant-garde sacred music or just play Take the A Train, the orchestra was right there with him.

Jorma and Jack were in a high school band together 52 years ago. After their years in the Airplane, they formed Hot Tuna to throttle back a bit and play the music they really like - a mix of blues, folk and rock. Which is also music I really like. They still clearly love what they're doing. And I still clearly love to watch them do it. At a few points in the set they'd just look at each other, play something that sometimes sounded like an old Airplane riff, and smile. There is nothing so satisfying as watching people do the only thing they ever wanted to do and doing it as well as it can be done.

Photo Credits: All photographs are by Danny Chamovitz and used with permission. Read more!

So Near And Yet So Far

The good news recently has been the condemnations of the recent Rabbinical edicts forbidding Jews from allowing Arabs, Africans and other Gentiles to move into Jewish towns or neighborhoods. It is, as one commentator put it, mortifying to live in a country where Rabbis would say such a thing. So I'm pleased to note the condemnations of the Rabbis' racist rants and the defense of Israel as a democracy that have been coming from all directions (even from a few prominent Haredi Rabbis, though they seem to be saying that the anti-Gentile edicts should not stand because they prove to be bad for the Jews -- don't ask.) Add to this the schadenfreude of watching black hats in Bnei Brak, who have recreated Brooklyn without any of "Them" around, discover, to their horror, that the schvartzes are moving in and the good guys seem to be winning this one. Well, almost.

In Bat Yam, a Rosh Yeshiva-led demonstration protested the influx of Arabs into the town. The Rabbi and his warped minions were particularly upset by what they claim is the proclivity of Arab men to seduce Jewish women. Ah, miscegenation libel, haven't heard that one in many a decade. The anti-Arab demonstrators were met by a larger, counter demonstration of local residents who support maintaining good relations among neighbors, whatever their backgrounds. This was followed quickly by a strong statement from Bat Yam's Mayor saying that the Rabbi's group does not represent or speak for Bat Yam.

It's good to be reminded that there are plenty of people, Jews and Gentiles, in Israel who know the difference between right and wrong and are willing to say so publicly. I'm just not so sure that one sign held up by the Bat Yam counter demonstrators was entirely consistent with the intent of the pro-human rights crowd. The sign read: "If your sister is as ugly as you are, who would want to hit on her?" So near and yet so far.
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"my next car is going to be an electric car"

Or so reads the bumper sticker from "Better Place" the exhibition center for Shai Agassi's grand scheme to bring all-electric cars onto the world market, starting, over the next few years with Israel and Denmark (plus taxi fleets in Tokyo and San Francisco). But what's striking about Agassi's business model is not the purchase of the car itself (think mid-sized sedan run on a battery instead of gasoline) but your ongoing relationship with the company. Better Place plugs you into a network that provides you with services to recharge or change your battery, maintain or repair your vehicle and all the digital entertainment, information and communication you'd expect in the car of tomorrow.

How? Through the smart card that starts your car's systems and let's you plug in to the recharging or battery changing stations. The car's computer and GPS keep you in constant contact with the Better Place network and can, for example, guide you to the nearest charging or battery changing station with the shortest line. Unlike existing car companies who sell you a car and then leave you on your own to get gasoline or digital communication services, Better Place sells you a car with an all-inclusive monthly service plan. Your bank account gets debited monthly. In other words, your relationship with your vehicle will be pretty much the same as with your cell phone.

Agassi figures, and I think he's right, that Israelis will love this. The market consists of several million tech savvy, upwardly mobile people who are perpetually plugged into their digital devices, pay over $6 a gallon for gasoline and would love to breath cleaner air while simultaneously f*****g the Arabs. Agassi's pitch is clear and to the point: Want to live better and stop funding terrorists? Get yourself an electric car. And, just in case you slept through the slick multi-media presentation, the symbolism of building the exhibition hall and test track on the ruins of the Pi Glilot complex, just north of Tel Aviv, is not lost on any of the locals. Pi Glilot? Oh yeah, that's where all the oil and chemical tanks used to be.

The New York World's Fair of 1964-65 featured such futuristic wonders as fiber optic cable from DuPont and video phones from AT&T. It took a few decades but that future really has arrived. What neither the World's Fair nor Better Place mentioned is what happens if the system crashes. I got a personal lesson in how the digital age can also taketh away when we first arrived for this winter's sojourn in Israel. On the day we arrived in Israel, our cell phones would not work. Cellcom, the largest cellular communications company in Israel, suffered a total network crash for reasons that have yet to be made public (probably to spare them the embarrassment of admitting to having been hacked by a couple of 16-year-olds who got tired of playing beer pong).

But, on the giveth side, Liz and I have installed webcams on our laptops and use both Skype and Gmail video chat to see and speak with the children. Shades of the World's Fair. It being Chanukah, I moved my computer to put the candles between the webcam and the parents, enabling us to light candles and sing songs with children in Chicago and in Hoboken, NJ. We could see the smiles on everyone's faces. Just like the families in the GE House of Tomorrow. Read more!

In Memory of Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, has passed away. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band played music that ran the gamut from brilliantly innovative to almost unlistenable, usually on the same side of the same album. In a day when jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrance were breaking free of old conventions like keys, chord changes and time signatures, Captain Beefheart was succeeding in such efforts but with a rock band.

Beefheart's group was, as I recall, the first band to be produced by Frank Zappa on his Pumpkin Records label. Zappa was pushing the envelope of music and liberating himself and other musicians with "no commercial potential" from the tyranny of the music companies. Back in the days before digital recording and the internet this was a lot easier said than done.

I am privileged to have seen Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band play at the Warehouse in Ithaca, New York, in the winter of 1971. To borrow from a later day, they rocked and we were not worthy. The opening act was a guy named Ry Cooder, playing electric slide blues and swing jazz, awesome musicians in awesome times.

Don Van Vliet, may his memory be for a blessing and may his art live on forever. Read more!

Forever Stamps or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Postal Rate Increases

Millburn, New Jersey
19 July 2010

Everyone laughed at me two years ago when I spent $820 to buy 2,000 Forever Stamps. But I'm the one laughing now.

I'd known about Forever Stamps for perhaps three years but was wary of buying them. You buy a stamp today at today's first class rate and it's good forever, no matter how high the first class rate goes. At first glance, a great hedge against one of life's certainties - postal rate increases. It's like death and taxes. Right? Since 1958, the frequency of rate increases has gone from 5 years down to less than two years (1958 was the first increase in 26 years, the current 42 cent rate will be in effect for a mere 20 months). The typical increase used to be a penny, now its at least two cents - that's a 100% increase in the amount of each increase. Given the increases in both the frequency and the amounts of postal rate hikes, Forever Stamps could be one of the greatest inflation hedges since common stocks and home ownership. And even us disabled, retired guys have better things to do than counting stamps, buying small stamps and sticking two or more stamps on every letter to use up our pre-increase stamp supply. Nevertheless, my brilliant analysis seemed to put Forever Stamps into the category of "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." After all, for the inflation hedge to work you'd need to buy enough stamps to last through some number of rate increases. What if the spread of electronic communications really does force the Post Office to close it's snail mail services? Let's be real, who would go out and buy a supply of more than one year's worth of stamps? Would you? Would anyone you know, even your friend who owns the business that advertises and ships by mail? Heck no. Only some wacko would go out and do something like that just to beat some hypothetical future rate increase imposed by an agency that some people, many of whom are decidedly not wackos, think is going to disappear.

And so, on May 1, 2008, 12 days before first class rates increased from 41 to 42 cents for the first ounce, I walked into the town Post Office and officially became the town's resident wacko.I asked the clerk if he had Forever Stamps. He said he did and also, on further inquiry, said he did not sell many and could not understand why more people did not use them. Figuring there must be a catch to what seemed, to me, like a great deal, I asked if there was a limit on the number I could buy. He said the limit was whatever amount he had in stock. As it turned out he had a pack of 2,000 stamps (that's 100, 20-stamp strips). And so, I impulsively invested $820 in 2,000 Forever Stamps, knowing that in a mere 12 days my stash would increase in value all the way up to $840. The clerk gave me a look like he wasn't quite sure whether to take my credit card or push the button that brings the Postal Police in to subdue customers who go off the deep end. People waiting on line behind me gave me lots of room when I turned to leave.

Returning home in triumph, I told my Beautiful Wife what I had wrought and, without looking up from her laptop, she said, as lovingly as she could manage between the chortles, "That's nice dear, you now have something to leave the children since you will die before using up the stamps." Now I will admit to making the purchase on impulse without actually calculating my stamp usage. So, for your amusement, here's how the math worked out. Most of my monthly bills are paid electronically and most of my correspondence is by e-mail. As a result, my actual need for stamps has fallen dramatically (which, multiplied by millions of Americans, is probably why the Postal Service needs more rate increases). Being generous, let's say the Beautiful Wife and me use ten stamps a month. Since we regularly spend 4 months a year in Israel, our "US Stamp Usage Year" is only 8 months long. That's 80 stamps a year. Divide 2,000 by 80 and you have enough stamps for 25 years. Given my multiple heart conditions, to say that in 2008 I had a life expectancy of 25 years would be generous.

The next week, the Beautiful Wife was standing on line in the Post Office. The clerk who made the sale was regaling a few people with the story of how some wacko had come in the week before and bought 2,000 Forever Stamps. The Beautiful Wife, always quick to defend her loved ones, shouted out, "That wacko is my husband!" The clerk started to apologize but she cut him off saying I had lost it years before and this purchase was no surprise. She then rushed home to tell me that I had become a town celebrity.

Now, whenever I get the chance, I remind the postal clerk, and everyone else who scoffed at me, that I'm the wacko who loaded up on the Forever Stamps. Only I do it with a note of triumph in my voice. When I first bought these stamps the second person I told about my brilliant idea was my good friend, Allan Sloan, a nationally prominent financial journalist. Allan, who does this for a living, had a jolly time mocking me and pointing out that he had written almost two years earlier that Forever Stamps might be a convenience but were certainly not a better inflation hedge than money market funds, Treasury paper or CDs. Of course, what Allan and everyone else who wrote me off as a wacko overlooked is that past performance really does not predict future results. Today he, like all those people who gave me lots of room at the Post Office, my children and even my Beautiful Wife, are not scoffing quite so loudly (or, more accurately, have found other good reasons to mock me). Why? Throughout the worst financial collapse since the 1930s and a recovery that may take most of the coming decade to return us to where we were before the housing bubble burst and the banks started doing the dead cat bounce, my Forever Stamps have done nothing but increase in value. Come next January 2, when first class rates go up to 46 cents for the first ounce, the value of my remaining stamps will have increased three times, gaining more than 12% (that's an annualized return of roughly 4.4% for the 32 months from May, 2008 through December, 2010). Not exactly pre-bubble bursting day trading profits but slow, steady, reliable and not too shabby under the circumstances. How's your portfolio been doing? Read more!

Everyone's Egyptian Grandmother

Tel Aviv
11 March 2010

Julie Ozon cooks Egyptian food just like your grandmother would if your grandmother was from Cairo. This is a line I often use to describe some wonderful hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant. This time it so happens that Julie, the owner and chef, is an Egyptian grandmother. Her cooking is truly sublime. Located in the Yemenite Quarter just down a narrow street from Shuk Hacarmel (corner of Yom Tov and Malan), Julie's is perfect for anyone who missesmiss eating lunch in their grandmother's kitchen.

Julie's family was driven out of Egypt (with most of the rest of the Egyptian Jewish community) in 1949. Their property (which included houses in Cairo and Alexandria) was confiscated. They spent time in a refuge camp in France and finally made their way to Israel, then a country with not much of anything, that had to absorb hundreds of thousands of refuges from Arab countries who came with the clothes on their backs. After the peace treaty, Julie made about seven trips back to Egypt to find the few remaining family and friends and take a look at where she had lived. But her trips, she says, are over. Israel is her home and here she will stay. You stroll in and become one of the family.

Julie's cooking is strictly home style, as is the service. Don't bother asking for a menu. Just ask what's for lunch. Julie or one of her assistants will stand behind a counter and describe (in any of several languages) what's in each pot. She will gladly make you a plate of what she thinks is good for your lunch (between Liz and I we got to sample something of everything and went back for seconds).

The central ingredient is ground meat with a variety of spices. Some of the meat is stuffed into vegetables (today we had eggplant, zucchini and artichoke heart), made into kubeh, meatballs or fried in a burger shape. These were topped off with a mix of sauces that included just enough harif so you know you're in the Middle East but not so much as to cloak the tastes of the spices. The problem with this style of cooking is that it can easily become too greasy. Not at Julie's.

She had two kinds of rice (saffron and white, the white with fresh vermicelli, the saffron with some chick peas and whichever sauce Julie decides to put on it). Added to this were green pea pods in a light sauce cooked so soft they almost needed a spoon instead of a fork.

It being a hot day we passed on the soup but had the Arabic coffee with cardamon and the tea with cloves, washed down with basbousa,a sweet cake made with semolina, honey and lemon syrup.

Once again we are reminded why we come to Israel and why we will miss this place so much when we are back in New Jersey. As we walked off to the shuk to shop for Shabbat dinner (company is coming) I called our agent to see if we can have the apartment for next winter. Read more!