1

It was a musical turning point.

I found out about the attack on the Twin Towers from Kate, she called and invited me to her house to watch TV, we needed to all be together.

And then I woke up my computer.

It was a Power Mac G4. I’d started with a Mac Plus in ’86 and then went to a Performa in ’95 when the software exceeded its capabilities and when that fried I’d purchased the G4, the top of the line, the state of the art. Now not only does Apple no longer use Motorola chips, it is phasing out Intel chips for those of its own construction. The end result is much faster computing, however speed hasn’t been an issue for years, but hardware was king at the turn of the century.

So I fired up AOL and saw the news. I’d already switched from TV to internet. And, of course, AOL was a walled garden, with at this point access to the internet, and I already had a high speed cable connection, to download music, and AOL had purchased Time Warner a little over a year earlier and… AOL cratered shortly thereafter, most people have no idea who owns it now and that’s how you know you’re dealing with an oldster, they still have an AOL e-mail address when most people moved on to the far better performing Gmail years ago. As for Time Warner? It’s been sold for pieces. Warner Records is an independent company, the cable system was sold to Charter Communications and stunningly, AT&T purchased HBO, the basic cable channels and the film studio, although now that’s been essentially laid off too. And HBO, with its Max streaming service, is the focus, where the eyeballs and money are, the film studio isn’t quite an afterthought, but it’s close. A lot can happen in twenty years.

So if you’re of a certain age you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot. And it seemed everybody remembered 9/11, but now there are people in the armed services who weren’t even born when it happened. It’s fading in the rearview mirror. Took them a long time to rebuild, but the Freedom Tower is now there. As is the museum, which is a must-see, go and dedicate some time, although they recently announced a budget cut and a reduction in new exhibits, that’s how much people really care about 9/11, it always comes down to the money.

So I went to Kate’s house where we talked as we watched and the most memorable thing I saw was someone jumping out of the building to their death. It was shocking, but then the news outlets decided not to show that anymore, it was almost like I hadn’t seen it, I had to check myself, but if you go to the museum you’ll see pictures of the jumpers. Think about how awful it must be to jump to your death to save yourself from burning up, end result is the same, but both options are horrific.

Today everything is online, even suicides. They try to take them down, but the social media networks leak like a sieve, and when the envelope is pushed the software is not ready to excise that which is offensive.

So for a while there, we were freaked out. Took about a day to figure out what had happened and then the question was…is it going to happen again? This people were not prepared for, they’d felt safe in America, but we’re still not safe today, despite the news that our reservoirs and power grids are not protected from bad actors, they’re still mostly unprotected, despite ransomware being ever more prevalent. Future wars will be fought by computers, and if you really want to have a say you’ve got to know not only how to use them, but how they work. A kid makes a PowerPoint presentation in elementary school, most boomers still have no idea how to do so. Boomers are still afraid of their computers, kids are not. Then again, boomers remember when one false move could crash your computer, and it was just a matter of time until your hard drive crashed. You had to back up! But now not only do electronic devices work so much better, and are so much heartier in their underpinnings, your work is stored in the cloud, your end device in many cases is just a dumb terminal, look at the inroads of Chromebooks.

Now Kennedy was shot on a Friday, we had all weekend, without work, to be glued to the news. 9/11 was on a Tuesday. America essentially shut down. The movers and shakers were stuck where they were, planes didn’t fly, and there was a sense of community, that’s what happens when you’re all in a virtual foxhole. Then again, those not in New York City had no idea of what it was like to be there, and interestingly it was those in the most rural locations who were convinced the terrorists were coming to their hamlet next, so they gave the government a ton of powers, sacrificing their privacy, because they didn’t want to die. Now these same people are mad the government wants to make them get a vaccine.

2

Napster was killed in the spring of 2001. KaZaA was growing, but the music business was still flourishing, CDs were still flying out the door, and MTV and VH1 were still extremely powerful. The VMAs were a cultural rite, not to be missed, today they’re just a branding opportunity for performers most people don’t know the name of and don’t care to know the name of.

But music was still a juggernaut. In addition, it was the canary in the coal mine for digital disruption, something the film and TV businesses are still going through. The music business learned you must give the public what it wants, the visual sphere still thinks it can dictate, it’s now in a fever over piracy, not knowing that if you put all the media in one location for one low price people won’t bother to pirate. Then again, the film and TV businesses have always looked down on music, despite music paying so many of the bills in the twentieth century, music was a cash cow.

But in 2001 the musicians were still powerful, gods, known for their music, not their shenanigans. And the way to bring everybody together was to have a concert, on all networks, on Friday night.

Today the value of a live benefit concert is de minimis, nearly worthless. Everybody is available on demand online and during Covid-19 there were so many live streams that they’re no longer special. You’ll tune in to see your favorites, after that, it’s a time suck. This is not 1985, this is not Live Aid, your time is precious and you don’t want to waste it, and we live in an on demand world and why should you spend time on anything you don’t care about? Not that the media has caught up with this. Awards show ratings have fallen through the floor, but they’re still suckers for live benefits, when the truth is the last one that meant anything was Live 8, and that’s mostly because of the appearance of the reunited Pink Floyd.

But Pink Floyd wouldn’t motivate all viewers today. Not even Journey with Steve Perry. The acts still seem relevant to those who remember their heyday, but most of America does not, never mind the twenty first century being about hip-hop and not rock.

So you could be cynical about “America: A Tribute to Heroes,” which aired ten days after the attacks, but that Friday night, I don’t know a single person who did not watch the four network show. Now there are youngsters who never ever watch network television, they find a cable subscription to be a rip-off, why pay for all that stuff you don’t want to watch, in many cases they don’t even have TVs! They just watch streaming shows on their laptops, or their phones, even though the same boomers still nostalgic for the antiquated theatre experience can’t accept this, even though the films are shot digitally, edited digitally and the standard of production is an LG OLED TV, which you can buy at home and then have the same experience. What are you missing? Paying twenty bucks to be in a room of noisy people looking at their phones?

3

So the main force behind “America: A Tribute to Heroes” was Jimmy Iovine, majordomo at Interscope Records, back when major labels still dominated the landscape. There’s not a record exec that powerful anymore, no way. And despite decrying technology, i.e. “theft,” Iovine kept coming up with ways to beat the system and make a fortune for himself and ultimately it was headphones, and after selling Beats to Apple Jimmy stayed on for a while, but he was out of time and out of touch, Iovine is now a billionaire art collector, leading the good life, he’s gone from the scene.

As for Bruce Springsteen… He can sell out on Broadway, just not in the rest of the world. Springsteen, a second or third generation rocker after the British Invasion, depending upon how you calculate, is the last tie to credibility. He dyes his hair and is conscious of his image, but he still makes new music and the press eats it up and so do his fans, but almost nobody else. His rendition of “My City of Ruins” was very powerful. But the subsequent “The Rising” album can’t hold a candle to his twentieth century work.

U2? They don’t go clean everywhere either. And after selling their album to Apple via Iovine they became hated, people don’t like anything forced upon them these days, we live in a pull economy. As for tech companies paying for albums… That was a nonstarter, but if you are a star, they’ll pay you for exclusive video documentaries. U2, like Springsteen, still puts out new music, like Springsteen in the old manner, albums every few years as opposed to dropping tracks constantly like today’s players, and they both look like dinosaurs, Springsteen playing to the boomers, U2 to the Gen-X’ers. As for everybody else? They don’t seem to care.

Faith Hill. Remember when she was one of the biggest names in country music, when it was still country music, before it became a lame version of seventies rock?

Tom Petty… He’s dead.

The Goo Goo Dolls…this was their peak, it was all downhill from here.

The Dixie Chicks…were soon to be exiled and despite shortening their name they’ve never come back, they’re a period piece.

Dave Matthews? He was a creature of VH1. Remember when fans were up in arms that he shelved a Steve Lillywhite production in favor of a Glen Ballard album in search of hits? It worked, but today Dave is an outdoor summer treat for those who lived through it, kind of like James Taylor, they both do amazing business at the box office, but those who don’t go are unaware and happily so.

Celine Dion? “Titanic” was in ’97, her fans still want to see her in concert, but she can’t get arrested with new recordings.

Paul Simon? Retired from touring.

Sheryl Crow? The queen of music television had the chutzpah to play a new song and for me it was the highlight of the night. You only had to hear “Safe and Sound” once to be moved, but the album of this concert didn’t come out until December, when most no longer cared, whereas today everything is available instantly.

Willie Nelson? A man out of time. He’s still as hip as he ever was, which proves if you want to last you should never follow trends. And back in 2001 if you asked us if weed could be legal, we would have said…NO WAY!

Sting? He’s got a new single, but without his Police bandmates his live business is far from strong.

Eddie Vedder? He’s got a new single too, and Pearl Jam does good live business, but if you’re not a Gen-X’er you ignore them.

Bon Jovi? Richie Sambora is no longer even in the group!

Mariah Carey? Known for her pipes? A joke who is constantly criticized for being unable to hit the notes live.

Wyclef Jean… Who?

Enrique Iglesias… Who?

As for Neil Young, he no longer has any power, no one from his era does, he used to speak and people listened, Young called today’s concerts superspreader events and it had absolutely no impact, the show must go on.

Stevie Wonder? Great, but he burned himself out in the seventies, with one of the best album runs ever.

And then there’s the curious case of Billy Joel, who by this point refused to release any new music and still hasn’t and is bigger than all the acts above! Billy’s depending upon the songs, it all comes down to the songs.

But not today.

4

Today…

Piracy? We’re thrilled you care enough to steal it! Will you please listen to my music! They said the internet would kill the incentive to make music and now we’re inundated in product, it’s never-ending, 60,000 tracks are uploaded to Spotify…A DAY!

No one will pay for music? Seemingly everyone is paying for music, on a monthly basis. I haven’t heard a person say they stole a song in years. Sure, some people never buy, but before the internet most people never bought, or only purchased one album a year.

Distribution? You needed the major label! Now distribution is wide open and essentially free to anyone, the friction is gone.

Radio? Find someone under twenty who still listens, I can’t find one.

CDs? I have three computers, none of them has a CD drive, nor does my automobile.

Meaningful songs that depict the heart and the soul of the culture? The biggest story of the past week is the beef between Kanye and Drizzy, it’s no different from professional wrestling. Turns out cartoons are the lowest common denominator, so you can get people to eat up this crap and go see the superhero movies but if you’re not interested…you’re not interested, AND MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT INTERESTED!

Melody? It’s now all beats.

Writing your own songs, making a statement from the heart? Now there can be eighteen writers on one song, songs are built brick by brick, it’s not about inspiration so much as calculation.

TikTok? Too many in the creative community don’t understand that the power is now in the hands of the proletariat. They decide what is a hit. You can do endless press and still reach no one other than those in your core audience, if they even get the message.

And then there are some things that never changed, that went through a few evolutions but are now back to where they once belonged, how they were in the beginning. I.e. e-mail. All the buzz is about Substack and newsletters, however only Heather Cox Richardson has seemed to garner a big audience with this model with a concomitant growth in esteem. Everybody else is writing to a tiny audience, thinking this is a good way to make a living when it’s not. What did we learn back in 2001? You’ve got to give it away free and make money on the ancillaries. The musicians learned this, Rihanna hasn’t put out new music for half a decade and she’s a billionaire!

As for tech… It was the wild west, it was all we talked about, we were constantly getting new gadgets. Now, the game of musical chairs is over, there are only a few platforms extant and if you don’t sell to them, you’re never going to succeed, because if you have a good idea they’ll compete with you and kill you.

Politics? It’s the new tech. It’s visceral, it’s life and death. That’s what those on both sides of the vaccine argument believe. The vaxxed think the unvaxxed are spreading the variant and more mutations will occur and the unvaxxed think the vaccine will kill them. As for science?

We’ve sold our souls to the 1’s and 0’s. But somehow people still won’t trust them. It’s astounding, you’ve got a computer in your hand, that almost never crashes, and it’s all built on 1’s and 0’s. But when it comes to science…it’s up for grabs, you must do your own research.

As for smartphones, they’re for texting and surfing the web, a young person never wants to talk on the phone, oftentimes they don’t even bother to set up their voice mail, or if they do they let it fill up and never check it.

So the big wheel keeps on turning, and we keep rollin’ down the river.

There are those in the music business who’ll tell you you’re too old, you don’t get it, that it’s the same as it ever was. WRONG! It couldn’t be more different!

And in an on demand world where everybody has cheap access to the same things it’s all now all about experiences, and concerts are the ultimate, people clamor to go. Yet you’ve got a media still focused on record sales and acts bitching they’re not making enough money on recordings when there are so many new avenues of compensation. So either they’re not innovative enough, stuck in the past, or they’re not good enough, but everybody in America, even the lowliest uneducated punk, thinks they’re as wise and talented as the President.

There’s no center, no common truth. People believe in their devices more than they do in any music.

And it is streams, even though “Billboard,” the “Bible,” turns everything into sales. CD sales are infinitesimal, unless you bundle them with t-shirts and other chozzerai in an effort to game the charts, which works, but you also make a ton of money doing it, getting more dollars from fewer people. Mass is passé, never forget it.

So the world has changed immensely from 2001. Completely different acts dominate recordings, despite the old acts still doing boffo at the b.o. But those acts triumphed in a different era, when we were all paying attention, when music could change the world.

It can’t anymore.

Paul Anka is a raconteur who tells us not only about his new album, but his writing process and 60+ years in the business, from bus tours with Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers to the Copa to Vegas to writing the theme song for “The Tonight Show” and “My Way” for Frank Sinatra. This is history come alive, with a lot of insight baked in, you’ll dig this.

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

https://listen.stitcher.c

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/paul-anka-86672109

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737

LINE OF DUTY

It’s the U.K.’s most watched drama series of the century.

Now when you hear “English show,” many think of PBS, period pieces, history, stuff for intellectuals with no edge. But not “Line of Duty.”

But “Line of Duty” is not on PBS.

Due to a rights issue, “Line of Duty” can be streamed on two outlets in the U.S., Acorn and BritBox. But only BritBox has season six, the latest one, which premiered earlier in the year across the pond.

So what we’ve got here is a police show. And what it’s really about is the police policing the police. AC-12 is the anti-corruption outfit, and it’s run by Ted Hastings, aka “The Gaffer,” i.e. Irish actor Adrian Dunbar.

You’ll recognize Dunbar, from “The Crying Game” and “My Left Foot,” but all the action in adult entertainment, and I don’t mean XXX, is now on the flat screen. Dunbar alone is worth the price of admission, but there’s so much more.

This is a dense show. And it is a labyrinth, kind of a whodunit. With twists and turns. But they don’t seem artificial, “Line of Duty” is not just an amusement park ride. AC-12 keeps peeling back the layers of the onion, trying to get to the truth, in a department that keeps saying there’s no corruption, think about that.

So the truth is most TV is awful, and so much is mediocre. There’s a limited amount of great stuff, and like pornography, you know it when you see it. And “Line of Duty” is truly great, you’ll power right through it, eating it up.

So to make it easy for you, fire up the Amazon Prime app. I know you’re a subscriber, for the quick delivery if nothing else. (And the cheap hi-res music streaming too!) Search for “Line of Duty” and…

You’ll find it on Acorn and BritBox, and in this case subscribe to BritBox, since it has the aforementioned sixth season.

And it’s not going to cost you a penny. You get seven days free, meaning if you’ve already watched seasons one to five of “Line of Duty,” you can sign on to BritBox and watch the sixth for free, you know you can finish it in seven days.

But if you’re a newbie…give it a chance, watch a few episodes. I nearly guarantee you’ll dig it, and if you don’t… Just launch Amazon and go in and cancel the service. It’s not easy to find, but it’s not that hard. If you can’t figure it out, just call Amazon, they’re very helpful, that’s why you shop there, for the service, for the trustworthiness. And I know some of you hate Amazon, and the company has many heinous behaviors, but when you sign off, when you stop using it, you accomplish nothing. When something is that appealing, you can’t kill it, you can only supersede it, or hope to improve it. Turned out downtown couldn’t be saved by boycotting Walmart, people wanted the low prices. But Amazon trumped Walmart and something could trump Amazon but it’d be damn hard and…

Y

ou can subscribe directly to Acorn and BritBox via apps on your Roku or Apple TV, and that’s fine with me, but if so, you’re already sophisticated enough to know how to do this, so ignore what I just said.

“Line of Duty” is not quite as good as “Spiral,” but it’s superior to almost all the TV out there, and it’s not faux-intellectual, it’s straight up the middle, I’d be stunned if you didn’t like it.

BRON/THE BRIDGE

This is on Topic, but it’s only five bucks a month, and you get the same seven day free trial on Amazon.

And the truth is there have been many remakes, I even watched and wrote about “The Tunnel,” a British-French redo, but the original is far superior to any other iteration, as good as “The Tunnel” was.

You see it’s Sofia Helin as Saga, who is on the spectrum.

Now if you tune in, you’ll notice Helin has a facial scar. I’ll save you the research, it’s from a bicycle accident, when she was already twenty four, just before her career took off. And therefore, Helin is beautiful but flawed, and it has one questioning one’s idea of beauty, we think it’s all about perfection, but it’s not. It’s mostly about character.

Not that you’d want to have a relationship with Saga, who actually says she’s incapable of having one, although she does like sex.

But it’s not only Saga. The characters are all 3-D, and fully hip and alive, despite Americans thinking other countries are backwaters. You should just check the houses! And the show is about the cooperation between the Swedish and Danish police forces and…

The first season has the same plot as “The Tunnel,” but watch it anyway, it’s different, you’ll still enjoy the ride. The remaining seasons are unique. And there are four, and then the show is done.

This is great TV, which is one reason it’s been shown in over a hundred countries. You’ll live to watch it, just like you will with “Line of Duty.”

HIT & RUN

Everybody was excited about this new Netflix series from the creators of “Fauda,” starring Lior Raz, aka “Doron” from “Fauda,” as the lead.

But soon after it came out, reviews weren’t good. And Israeli and Danish television are considered to be the world’s best. So I waited a while to pull it up and then…

I found out the critics were right.

The plot is twisted, and that keeps you interested, but in truth “Hit & Run” is a cross between an Israeli and American series, and that’s the flaw. American shows are about the look, and danger, they’re oftentimes gussied-up cartoons. You’re watching and at some point you see Lior Raz as just another action hero, like in those bogus movies that play in the cinema, with talented actors slumming for the paycheck.

For a minute there, I thought “Hit & Run” was better than the reviews, but it’s not. Don’t listen to the scuttlebutt, most people are not critics, they haven’t been exposed to great television so they settle for stuff like this as opposed to “Line of Duty” and “The Bridge.” And yes, unlike those two shows, “Hit & Run” is half in English, but I know you can handle subtitles, after all you watch “Money Heist”!

MONEY HEIST

What a disappointment!

So they cut the last heist in half, left us hanging in the middle, and when you dive back in you can’t remember what was happening and over the five new episodes you realize…you just don’t care.

I mean come on, get to the conclusion!

But this is a great advertisement for dumping all episodes at once. I would have felt better about the just dropped five episodes of “Money Heist” if I’d just finished the beginning of the season, but now I don’t even care about the rest of the show. I loved the characters, laughed and cried along with them, and now it’s just a money machine, Netflix employing the show to keep you subscribing, and it’s not worth it.

I won’t reveal any of the plot, but everybody else I know who jumped to see this last weekend feels the exact same way. I hate when producers and distributors are out of touch with the public.

It’s the first one since my mother died.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not in the holiday spirit, which usually means guilt. You grow up going to temple on the High Holy Days, oftentimes it’s blisteringly hot. You sit in the back, pay your dues and then go home and eat. Yom Kippur is even worse, you’re supposed to fast for 24 hours and it’s heavy, God is supposed to be deciding who will be written in the book of life for the following year, who will make it through.

Do I believe in God?

I wish there was a man in the sky overseeing everything, settling scores, steering his people, but the fact is there’s not. No, I cannot disprove his (why do they always say “his,” isn’t thinking that God would be a guy sexist on its face?) existence, but the truth is religion was a way to explain phenomena that we can now explain via science.

As for the burning bush and the parting of the Red Sea…those are bubbameisers, old wives’ tales passed down through generations and…the truth is Judaism is not a didactic religion, it’s a questioning religion, and you can question and still be a member of the tribe. Why not, everybody else is considering you to be Jewish, even if you say you’ve never practiced, you can’t deny your lineage.

So I was watching a streaming show and they were trying to figure out who the culprits were and they said not to bother checking the museums, because the offenders were not Jewish. I never realized that was a Jewish trait, but my mother lived for the museum. And now I do too. Everywhere I go, that’s what I check out. Doesn’t matter the city. I guess someone could go somewhere and soak up the flavor, but unless you know locals, I’m not exactly sure how you do that. But the museum hooks you, makes you feel plugged in, especially in the big burgs that have city museums.

But my point here is there are Jewish characteristics. Like being verbal. I’ve never met a silent Jew in my life. That’s one thing I couldn’t understand at Middlebury, all the people who had nothing to say. In our family, in Jewish families, people have so much to say that you can’t get a word in edgewise, it’s a scrum, you’ve got to fight for your position to be heard, by butting in and talking over everybody else, otherwise you become a nonentity.

And that was another thing that blew my mind, especially in college, people wouldn’t speak up. There’d be ten or twenty people in the class and the teacher would ask a question and no one would volunteer an answer, and believe me the students had done the reading, otherwise they didn’t show, they didn’t want to be exposed.

So in some cities the High Holy Days are holidays, there’s no school. Not in my town. Then again, no Jew went to school on those days, and oftentimes, after years of unproductive days, the non-Jews stopped going too, at least in the top track, populated by Jews, who may not have been inherently smarter, but whose parents pushed them to get ahead.

And there are so many other Jewish things. Like summer camp. You sat at home all summer and watched TV? Unheard of in a Jewish family! You’re shipped off to camp whether you want to go or not, so your parents can travel, that’s another Jewish characteristic. And despite all this talk about Jewish mothers, that generation is dead and buried, for the last fifty or sixty years Jewish mothers told their kids what to do, but they didn’t spend all their time with them, guilting them. It was clear, if you didn’t do what was expected, get good grades and go to college…you would die at the hands of your father. You think I’m joking…

So I’m a Jew through and through.

And I like that Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch in the World Series on Yom Kippur, but…

I must admit, the last few years of high school, my family didn’t go to temple on Rosh Hashanah. We never missed Yom Kippur services, but my family went to Vermont, played golf at the Equinox, called it “The Rosh Hashanah Open.”

And if you want to feel really Jewish, go where there are no landsmen. That’s how you get in touch with your identity, especially when the people around you, often educated and rich, make anti-Semitic comments, not realizing you’re a member of the tribe. They can tell if someone is Black, or Asian, but Jews slip by and…it’s clear not everybody is on your side.

So ever since the Internet I’ve gone to High Holy Day services online, starting in 1996. It was a more intimate experience, the Rabbi was right in front of me on the screen. And it assuaged my guilt. Yes, we have Jewish guilt baked in, because of the six million, because of the endless persecution, there’s nothing worse than a denier, someone who’s trying to pass for a non-Jew. But this year I had no guilt.

And I was trying to think why.

Well, first of all Rosh Hashanah was on a holiday, in this case Labor Day. That’s another thing about the non-Jewish world, they can never cotton to the fact that Jewish holidays start the night before. Essentially every calendar is wrong. The one on my Mac certainly is. But at least in the internet age we can Google and find the exact date, whereas all the calendars have it the following day.

So this year Rosh Hashanah wasn’t especially novel, it didn’t stand out.

And then there’s this damn coronavirus. It’s hard to believe in God these days. And then you’ve got the yahoos on the other side who say God is going to save them. Believe all you want, just don’t impinge on me. But no, they get vaccine exemptions from their house of worship, they’re working the rules, and denying the rights of gays at the same time. That’s one place the Jews were way ahead, with gay rabbis. Never mind the fact that the clergy can get married.

So I can’t say I’ve been in a festive mood.

And then it hit me, my mother is gone.

Now I’ve got to tell you, last year when she called me on the High Holy Days she wasn’t very with it. She knew it was Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, but her short term memory was close to obliterated. You could have a long conversation and then she wouldn’t remember it. I got to the point where I just let her talk. The more out of it she got, the more she talked, not that she wasn’t a talker to begin with. There was a stretch of a few months, about six months before she passed, when she didn’t want to talk on the phone, and that gave me a heads-up she was on the way out, but as she got worse she got more talkative and the truth is if you said anything it was open season for judgment, even if she couldn’t remember it the next day, my mother loved to question my choices, make me feel bad.

So I must say it’s kind of a relief my mother is gone. I’m free.

And I’m trying to adjust to that. It’s really about the passing of the generations. It’s not like my mother got ripped off, she almost made it to 94, but when they’re gone, you realize you’re next. It changes your entire perspective, you see the way of the world, a lot becomes less important, you become somewhat distant and disconnected from the everyday, you start to realize what is really important, and when you see people your age in the same boat, sans parents, who are still playing the game, showing off their possessions, telling you how great they are, you laugh, because they got the memo, they’re just denying it. That’s right, there’s a conveyor belt, and you’re being pushed down the line all the time, even when you’re asleep.

And when you’re young you can’t wait to be older. To drink. To drive. To leave your house.

And 21 is a breakthrough. But suddenly you’re an adult, no one treats you like a child anymore. Doesn’t matter how mature you are. Then again, there are family dynasties where they never let the kids grow up. But not many Jewish ones. People keep saying the Jews run the world, but if you look at who has all the money this is patently untrue, they just want a scapegoat.

So I knew that call would be coming. I’d wait for it, I’d expect it. My mother would dial and I’d pick up the phone and she’d wish me a happy new year. She’d be bright, she’d be sunny, she’d tell me where she was going for dinner, it wasn’t a long conversation, it was a check-in.

But all my mother’s friends died and those who remained abandoned her so she was living alone, in a silo, and she was getting depressed, and she wanted to move to California, to be with her kids, and she came here and promptly died, of sepsis that could have been avoided if the people back in Connecticut were on the ball.

Then again, she wanted to have no help but she needed it. Which made it hard to find a place to house her. The totally independent facilities are not up to the challenge, and despite deterioration, my mother kept saying she was so much better than those in the dementia ward.

And I can try and rewrite the past, think if people were on the ball in CT, but…

This is the way it plays out. Your time comes. You go. It’s never pretty. It’s frequently something small that grows into a conflagration.

So on some level it’s a blessing that my mother passed, we didn’t have to see her get worse, and in many ways she was in good health, the doctor said she could live years.

But she didn’t.

But it wasn’t like my father dying, at 70, the first of my parents’ circle to go. You could rely on my father, he was the backstop. He was at times positively insane, truly, but down deep he had a good heart, and if things were really bad he could hear it in your voice and soothe you, send you some money for a good meal.

And when my father died I was penniless and freaked out. You can’t live with no money, it’s all you think about all the time, while the bill collectors leave endless messages on your phone, which you can no longer pick up. They say that after a couple of weeks people don’t recover from being homeless, it’s the same thing with being broke. Took me years of therapy to get back into the land of the living, but I still know where every dollar I’ve got is, I still think about it lasting me, I still have trouble spending frivolously.

But now I’m in a better space. But I look at my friends who have little savings and took Social Security early and have no real income…what is going to happen to them when they’re 90?

Which I’ll probably never make. Having cancer and pemphigus. Maybe, but I’m not counting on it. But I want to be prepared, I don’t want to run out of money, if I die with a ton in the bank I’ve won, I’ll just pass it on to my sisters.

Not that my mother understood money. She was cheap. My father was frugal, but he’d spend on what he wanted, especially for his kids.

But now I’m in control. The years went by and I continued to feel young, but then my mother passed and…

Reality set in.

I like that people are wishing me a happy new year from around the world. But I also know that religion is about community, at least Judaism, as for belief and helping you…better to go to the hospital than pray to God.

So I’m a bit off-kilter.

But I gotta say…HAPPY NEW YEAR!