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Friday, March 22, 2024

Veneration and its Converse: Renting an Apartment as a Retiree in Los Angeles

 

veneration - n. - great respect; reverence


Although I have probably touched on this before, I feel I must state the obvious one more time: veneration is rare these days. It used to be that if you were a halfway decent person (meaning kind, compassionate, etc.) had money in the bank, the world was your oyster. Well, let's put it mildly, if you consider yourself to be venerated today, chances are you may have the attributes aforementioned, but you aren't sixty five or over.

Over the past weekend, I was hit with ageism head on while trying to rent an apartment in Los Angeles. Mind you, L.A. likes to bask in the often obfuscated light of a democratic state, well aware of the hazards of discrimination. In fact, there are placards posted in myriad places reminding the public reader that it just won't tolerate prejudice of any kind. Funny thing, though, every possible example of bias is mentioned except ageism. 

Case in point: admittedly, I, like many of my kind, am a senior citizen with a healthy portfolio and income coming from several sources. Fortunately, I can afford to lease an apartment in both New York and Los Angeles, albeit not simultaneously. In Los Angeles as in many other hot spots in the U.S., in order to secure an apartment, you must prove that your income is three times the monthly rent, which is not easy if the rent is 3K or more. The main problem, though, is that if you happen to be retired, there is no separate application for you. These conglomerates that own the luxurious resort hotel apartment complexes operate on a "one size fits all" policy. Basically, they are not interested in you if you do not have a steady job that pays you a high weekly salary, not even if you are a multi-millionaire sans an occupation other than gardening and golf. Their computer algorithms are created to accept only those who are gainfully employed, blind to the probable possibility that if they are living paycheck to paycheck, they could get laid off at any time, rendering them unable to pay the rent. Contrarily, New York real estate operates on the basis of common sense. In New York City, you have to prove you have fifty times your monthly rent in the bank, which is hard to do when the average price of a one bedroom is $4,500 (or $225,000 in the bank), of course, but most of the young renters have wealthy parents who can and do co-sign their leases for them. The real estate moguls in the City know that money in the bank pays the rent on time, not an iffy weekly salary. 

As for me, I liked a complex in the lush, tropical, yet pragmatic planned community of Playa Vista just south of Marina del Mar (both in L.A. county) and applied to rent at Runway, a sleek resort-style complex with all of the amenities you can think of in tow. Because Runway's rental application completely disregards retirees, I was rejected not once, but twice. After much frustration, I gave up on renting there (even though the leasing manager finally emailed me offering me the apartment and apologizing for the ineptitude of his colleagues and data base) and signed with a competitor who took one look at my portfolio and said, "You're approved with verification from your bank." Smart man. He did the mental math. 

Regardless of your particular age, it should not be so incredibly hard to rent an apartment these days. And landlords of any kind should not discriminate against cotton tops turned Clairol box tops like me who slaved for many, many years yet cannot boast that they are earning a consistent weekly paycheck. Correct your websites, people in this biz. Add a separate application for retirees or very lucky independently wealthy scions before you continue to embarrass yourselves. You're losing business due to your dearth of common sense. Money is money regardless of its source. That being said, as a new renter, I am still thrilled to be free of all the complications associated with homeownership. The algorithmic aggravation was well worth the transition from money pit to someone else's responsibility. To me, that is a taste of veneration right there.


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #LiteraryCriticism, #satire, #society, #real estate, #LosAngeles


Saturday, March 2, 2024

Selling a Home? Beware of the Overly Punctilious and Entitled

 


punctilious - adjective - showing great attention to detail


Anxious to kickstart a new chapter in my life on the West Coast, I decided to sell my home in the Jersey suburbs myself with a generous portion of help from an associate, a former friend, turned beau, turned friend again, who happens to be a real estate agent. Of course, I am paying him something for his time as even one percent amounts to a comfortable chunk when the house is worth 750K. What started as an innocuous pairing of the Bobbsey Twins (I'm dating myself here) has segued into Beowulf and Wiglaf (now I'm really dating myself) as it is NOT easy to sell a house in this age of the punctilious and entitled. In fact, it was probably easier for Beowulf to slay the dragon because after all, he and Wiglaf did have knives, something no respectable seller can rely on when negotiating a sale with the buyer's cutthroat real estate attorney. 

At present, most of the buyers out there are Millennials, a generation that is used to receiving trophies for showing up. Although most of them are intelligent, they seem to get away with doing comparatively little to earn their inflated salaries. Yet it probably isn't their fault entirely as it is easy to "quiet quit" when supervisors' expectations are low. Unfortunately, the lackadaisical attitude has carried over into real estate sales. 

Twenty-five years ago, I was a single mom in my late thirties, fresh out of divorce court with a seven-year-old daughter who wanted to reside in a neighborhood of families with children. I was desperate to provide the right, healthy environment for her, so I bought an old, decrepit house in a solid environment and spent the next 24 years dumping money into the money pit, only to realize recently, much to my disappointment, that no matter what you spend and how much you do to improve your property, it is not good enough for these young, newly wed buyers who see the house as yet another potential trophy. The feeling is if they put up enough in the way of savings and loans and mom and dad's monetary gifts, the house should be picture perfect in every way regardless of its age. Sorry. It just doesn't work that way. Like the human body, no matter the age, continual maintenance is involved. There will always be something that needs attention.

This is a wake-up-and-smell-the-roses moment for all of you nouveau riche Millennials out there migrating from your primitive apartments in Brooklyn to the overpriced suburbs of New Jersey or Connecticut: If you buy a house, no matter how old or new it is, you are going to have to work and spend a lot of money to maintain the the luster of the trophy, no matter how it was obtained. Nothing will come easily. And in ten years, when you decide to sell your Cape Cod starter home in order to buy the McMansion dream, you must realize that even your township of record will try to take you down by dredging up open permits from before you even bought your place and then charging you $150 to inspect areas that have nothing to do with the open permits, only to fail you, again charging you another $150 to return after you have spent even more money to appease them. I just wrote over $500 in checks to my township this past week. Why they need this kind of cash is beyond me. You would think my 10K a year in property taxes would appease them. Think again. As a result of the shenanigans, I am beginning to put a lot of credence in conspiracy theories involving the government, any form of it at all. 

For those of you Florida-bound-hopeful Boomers who are thinking of trying to take advantage of the current sellers' market by putting "For Sale" signs on your front lawns, think twice. No matter how much you have put into your houses to make them presentable, you are going to have to cough up a lot more because no Millennials want to buy fixer-uppers, for what should be obvious reasons by now. If there is too much to be done, save yourselves some aggravation and sell to builders. To these wet-behind-the-ears buyers, new is always better no matter how well built your Jazz Age, craftsman bungalows are. 


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #LiteraryCriticism, #satire, #society






Tuesday, February 20, 2024

A Needed, Avuncular Voyage

 


avuncular - adjective - like an uncle; careful, heedful


Sometimes it is unsteadying to reach a certain milestone in life and then look back at the past, as the tendency is to compare what was then to what is now. If you are 65 or over and gaze back over your shoulder about fifty years, the differences between then and now are so extreme that they could make you dizzy. Although I make a conscious effort to live in the present, occasionally I drift back into the past when prompted. 

The other day, a gentleman whom I met recently suggested that I watch an oldie but goodie, Carl Reiner's black comedy "Where's Poppa?" (1970, United Artists) on a streaming service. Since the film's cast is topnotch (George Segal, Ruth Gordon, Ron Leibman, Trish Van Devere, Rob Reiner, and Vincent Gardenia), I could not say no. If you are brave enough to follow my lead and take a walk on the unwoke, wild side, make sure you are safely ensconced on a couch for the entire duration so that you don't get a quick case of vertigo from the experience of watching. After having gotten used to a sanitary, woke world, to take in scenes of the opposite got me reeling. Nothing, believe me, nothing about this movie is remotely politically correct. If writer Robert Klane were to attempt to submit his screenplay to any production companies today, he would be laughed out of Hollywood. Cancelled indefinitely. 

In case you are too scared to take the plunge, I'll spill the beans re: the contemporary atrocities in a work wherein cultural stereotypes abound. Warning: there is no subgroup that is not satirized. To start, Jewish men, their wives, and their mothers are ridiculed: Ruth Gordon, a brilliant character actress, plays the insufferable Mrs. Hocheiser, demented mother to forcibly avuncular George Segal (lawyer Gordon) and Ron Leibman (henpecked Sidney). She has them both shackled to their dying father's wish, not to put their impossible mother into "a home," the only sane solution to the problem. George bends over backwards to get her into an early grave, including buying and then wearing a gorilla suit in order to scare her to death. When he meets the love of his life, angelic Louise (Trish Van Devere), a caregiver who answers Gordon's ad for help with mom, he loses patience and informs his brother Sidney (Ron Leibman) that he will throw Mom out of the window if he doesn't take her off his hands. Despite the protests of Sidney's unsympathetic wife, he answers the call but must first go through Central Park after dusk before he can get to Gordon's apartment. While in Central Park, he is accosted by ruffian rapists and muggers (all played by African American male actors, which would NEVER fly today) not once, but twice. Fragile, malleable Sidney himself is forced by the unlawful gang to "rape" an off-duty, gay police officer dressed as a woman who doesn't not press charges, claiming the encounter was one of the passionate highlights of his life, icing the cake that is his infatuation with red roses. There are other subgroups that are criticized, namely American military officers who are depicted as austere, profane, immoral warmongers capable of genocide. Naturally, the film is an unforgiving, biting satire at which audiences laughed only to realize that '70s society needed to change drastically.

And somehow at some point it did a 180. Today, nothing is politically incorrect, nothing is satirized for fear of reprisal, cancellation on social media. Very few have the audacity to take pot shots at what is wrong with society today, even comedians are kept at bay. So it all comes down to us being left to take an honest look at what is going on around us and make a few alterations. "Where's Poppa?" of the 1970s may very well segue into "Where's Sanity?" in the 2020s, a needed, avuncular voyage.


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #LiteraryCriticism, #satire, #society






Thursday, February 8, 2024

Is LESS More? (a book review)

 


spoony - adjective - foolish, tenderhearted


Andrew Sean Greer's celebrated Less (Back Bay Books, 2017), a gay take-off on Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, features forty-nine-year-old Arthur Less, a self-deprecatory, "spoony,"gay author who attempts to solder heartbreak by traveling the world to fulfill long-overdue literary obligations (and a suggestion made at a poker game). Greer's voice has a unique flair, belting the reader with one bizarre metaphor or simile after the next, humorous on occasion as some of the farfetched comparisons are so exaggerated and incongruent that the reader can't help but collapse into guffaw at the absurd imagery projected. 

The hard truth is that the unsympathetic protagonist, Less, is, more or less, not likable. He comes off as a stereotype of a gay man: eternally lonely, weak, promiscuous: a fool for beautiful young boys or famous, older mentors. Ironically, at one point, his homosexual writer colleague criticizes him for denigrating the community by composing a minimally successful modernization of Homer's The Odyssey via his Kalipso! about a bi-sexual Odysseus trapped in hedonistic paradise with a beautiful man, Kalipso. Naturally, when he breaks away to rejoin wife Penelope, the critic feels slighted as no self-respecting, authentic gay man would do that even if the woman happens to be the beguiling, long-suffering Penelope. Despite the denigrating criticism, his well-written novel lands Less invitations to various literary events in Europe, all of which he accepts on account of former paramour Freddy's marriage; Less needs a valid excuse as to why he can't attend one day's nuptials, so he makes sure he is out of the country for a least a month. But it does make sense since the groom, Freddy, the son of Less's nemesis Carlos, remains his biggest love, an insurmountable emotional obstacle since it is left unrequited. Towards the end, just to elongate the book, Greer has Less venture into Morocco to visit an old friend and India to give him ideas for a new tome. At the end, he winds up in Japan to critique the food. How desultory is that? 

Worthy of mention as well, but not surprising, is that there are no leading ladies in this tall tale. There are a few interesting, yet fleeting females that seem to appear and vanish like mirages in the Sahara, but not one is memorable unlike some mirages that are :). 

Unfortunately, there is no real eating (but there's the drinking of champagne and there's what he does or attempts to do in Japan) or praying (Less is not religious, yet he winds up on the grounds of a Christian retreat in India) in the 259-page book. Which means there are no actual concrete motifs (unless you count the champagne) to unite the random except for the anticipated, unconnected, outlandish conceits that kept me picking up the book instead of putting it down and leaving it closed indefinitely. The novel is glorious in its wordplay. It does not surprise me that Greer won the coveted Pulitzer as he is the only young author whose work I've read lately whose creative writing comes close to inspired or inspiring, so there is that. 

However, as a conservative, pedantic, Old School writer, I am pretty closed minded when it comes to rules. A half century ago, I was taught to keep the point of view of the narration consistent. Greer doesn't, and it confuses the reader as most shifts that come out of nowhere do. Going from third to first in the last few pages may suffice as the "unpredictable" touch that one learns to add into a short story in one's first fiction class, but it is just unnecessarily jarring to the reader. (Actually, I guessed the identity of the narrator from the very beginning, so I wasn't surprised at all.)

Unless I get my small group of close gay friends together in a book club, which is highly unlikely because most of them are touring actors, I think I'll pass on any "Less" sequels by Greer. But that doesn't mean that you should. This is a subjective opinion piece, after all. Read it for the uniqueness of voice and wish secretly that you could come up with comparisons as inventive as Greer's. 


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #BookReview, #LiteraryCriticism




Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Chick-A-Chick-A Boom! The Residual Effects of War

 


residual - adjective - remaining after the greater part or quantity has gone (Google).


There can be no debate. Nothing good comes from full-scale destruction. Obviously, the weightier the war, the more consequential the effects on the people who experienced the fray head-on in the trenches. Yet the deleterious outcome or outcomes are not limited to the participants. Successive generations can feel the sting of violent opposition. Hatred can obliterate the capacity to love over decades. 

Case in point: take the damaged men of my generation, most aptly named the Baby Boomers. The moniker is not meant to stand as onomatopoeia attached to the soundtrack of battle as in "Boom went the bombs" (but if the shoe fits...). No doubt, boom could be a play on the word boon (windfall) or the slang term booming (as in increasing)representing the surge in population after World War II. Let's face it, after being deprived of physical love for such a long time, the soldiers wanted to make up for lost time,"boom-boom"legitimately with their significant others, and they did. The results of which produced about 2.5 babies per household, many more if the vet dads ascribed to a specific religion. Yet the shoe does fit in the literal sense. Many Boomers are suffering from the after effects of the bombs that fell around their desperately ducking dads on the battlegrounds. They are damaged goods and got that way due to the residual effects of the war. Sorry, men of my generation. You are inextricably blemished, and I have the common sense to prove it.

World War II left its participants torn, bleeding, not merely physically (in some cases), but psychologically. Most who had survived combat walked away with PTSD. There was no way around it. However, these men were expected to "get over" their feelings perceived as "weak." Of course, they couldn't do it themselves; consequently, having no choice, they went on with their daily lives, thankful to be alive. These psychologically impaired men continued on to become the flawed fathers of Boomers, who couldn't authentically be available for their children. The halved vets were incapable of being whole, and their sons, who really needed them as role models (Moms couldn't do everything but often did), found them to be feckless examples as absentee parents. 

The most tragic residual effect of World War II? Male Boomers' inability to love. Okay, fine. I'm not saying all of them are cursed in this sense, but many of them are. (Most of the single ones are. Believe me.) Just listen to the complaints of us female Boomers, who often are creased as well but who have ironed out better and can function well emotionally because we are wired that way. There are men of my generation who hold topnotch degrees and successful positions in their places of employment, but these same people can't seem to love in the true sense albeit they think they can. Ironically, they can commit to academia and the demands of their vocations, and perhaps even their offspring, but they are clueless when it comes to intimacy in the form of romantic love, hence the growing rate of divorce and mass loneliness. As for the predecessors of the Boomers, are they better off? I think not. Many of them can't commit to anything at all, no less love.

Maybe the defect I'm underscoring has nothing to do with war at all? Maybe it is just part and parcel of human nature? I can't give you a definitive answer because my thesis is based on opinion and personal experience. But this I do know to be factual. Nothing good comes from war. So if you feel the solution to the miscellaneous confrontations making front-page news today is bombing the antagonists all to oblivion, think again. A solution can never fall under the nomenclature of HATE and pan out well. I think Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday we recently celebrated, said it best: "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." 

So man up, Boomer men, and learn how to love your women well. Gender and generational differences aside, we all need to stop blaming our parents for whatever they might have or might not have done and commit to full-scale love.


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth




Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Wealthy, Fortunate, Blessed

 

wealthy - adjective - having a great deal of money, resources, assets; rich.

fortunate - adjective - favored by or involving good luck, fortunate; lucky.

blessed - adjective - feeling lucky to have health, fame, fortune, talent. 

-Google 


Happy New Year to my few, but quality readers!

Stepping into a new year often includes taking along with you a few adjectives pertaining to how you feel about who you are. Hopefully, the descriptors are positive as opposed to negative. You always want to begin on the right foot. Right?

As some of you know, I have a friend–a psychotherapist, in L.A.–where I am planning to move this spring. Because he cares (I hope so, anyway), he is constantly preparing me for the environmental changes indicative of Los Angeles that I might not be aware of, most of which I am. Sometimes I think that he thinks I live in the state of Naivety rather than New Jersey, too close to the pavements of New York City to be as green as grass, but he means well. He commented that as wealthy as I might consider myself on the East Coast, my monetary status pales in comparison to the riches pretentiously displayed in L.A. I retorted that many of those Lost Angels may have a lot in terms of money, resources, assets, what have you, but little in the way of actual wealth, wealth of character, spirit–the kind that can't be minted or grown on trees. He agreed. I told him that I am in a different category in that I'm under the Fortunate-To-Be-Blessed nomenclature. My angels are not lost as they always seem to be working overtime to keep my head above water unlike many other heads today who are genuinely struggling to keep from drowning.

The conversation progressed into a discussion of socialism versus capitalism, uneven, controversial ground. What we both agreed upon is the idea that the billionaires need to remove their heads from the sawdust long enough to see that our country is becoming a land of severe monetary contrasts: the have's and have-not's are in juxtaposition to each other, and it is wrong. Rather than writing checks, these wealthy types (who tend to be miserable in their selfishness) need to spend some time on the other side of the tracks. Only after they acknowledge the disparities can they make any differences so that no one needs to suffer unnecessarily. The churches and civic organizations, funded by the wealthy, are doing what they can do, but everyone must get involved.

Okay, I'm getting a bit preachy here. I know. But I think we can all embrace a mutual New Year's resolution to spend a little more time doing our share for others. If nothing else, the effect of the cause may be feeling blessed, which is a prime adjective to describe you. One that you can be proud of.


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth




Friday, December 15, 2023

Agape at Agape

 


1. agape - adjective - wide open; being in the state of wonder. 

2. agape - noun - highest form of love, fatherly love, charity 


Every Wednesday annually, I make a serious attempt (at which I am usually successful) at participating in agape. Along with a church group of about twenty good samaritans (actually, true Christians) in an old van, I venture out in my quest to enact agape (2) among the multitudes of the down and out, a.k.a. homeless people in a nondescript New Jersey city called Elizabeth. What usually leaves me agape (1) is how easy it is to bring divergent peoples together in one room and witness and live agape (2) full on via the distribution of food. 

What always impresses me is how the youngest members of the group, the middle school students, usually quite wayward by nature, can find self-discipline and parcel out meals to over a hundred hungry people off of the streets, proving that when one entrusts another with an important task, age doesn't matter. These kids overcome all obstacles met on the floor and enjoy the responsibilities given to them. Heck, they can even manage the adults quite well while learning what is known as a work ethic. (Sound familiar?) The process is painless. In fact, most of them consider the experience to be "fun." Who would've thought? I stand agape (1) at their willingness to meet all incoming challenges. They leave me with hope that the younger generations will be able to tackle the world's myriad problems. 

I am usually in the kitchen, ladling out potatoes, meatloaf, beans, bread, bananas onto to paper plates at incomprehensible speeds. It is astounding that most of the goods don't wind up on the floor. This talent of keeping everything on the plates comes with experience, of course. I figure that it must be like working on an assembly line in a GM plant except that the rewards transcend the monetary since all of us on staff are volunteers. Imagine that: doing a job for nothing but love. I see it as another verse to Lennon's "Imagine." "Imagine all the people working for the sake of love..." Why not? I'm sure John would have approved. 

Perhaps my favorite segment of the evening comes after all needy bellies have been satiated and have found their way back out on the streets and we "disciples" sit to recount where we saw God throughout the evening. The kids usually see God in themselves; the adults see God in the kids, and I see God in the homeless people themselves who, on their way out, often come up to the kitchen door to thank me and my staff of friends. They grin with appreciation albeit they have little to be thankful for. Love is, after all, kind, selfless. 

In this season that is all about agape, let's try to think more about disseminating love. Christmas, after all, is not about materialism although most advertisers at this time of year might try to convince you that it is. Ignore them. Get back to basics. Be brave. Make a difference, even if it is just in your own neighborhood. Don't just stand agape at agape. Embrace it. Let it become a portion of yourself. 


#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #truth, #agape, #love





Veneration and its Converse: Renting an Apartment as a Retiree in Los Angeles

  veneration - n. - great respect; reverence Although I have probably touched on this before, I feel I must state the obvious one more time:...