If Only Leaves Had Value

By Paul Greeley

 

 

It’s that time of year again.

When Mother Nature turns trees into eruptions of color just before they disrobe for the winter.

That time when people ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ over how those boring green leaves suddenly turn beautiful shades of red and orange just before they die and fall to the ground where they become a major, worthless nuisance.

 Somewhere, I hope there are teams of experts working on solutions to problems to  benefit mankind---an end to cancer, a cure for the common cold, and what the Kardashians actually do for a living.

I’d like to add one more item to that list—find a way to make leaves valuable.

 I’ve got a couple ideas they can experiment on.

Everybody loves the smell of burning leaves. Why couldn’t Martha Stewart come up with a cologne or room deodorizer that could capture the smell of smoldering leaves?

What about dipping the leaves into hot oil, add salt and sell them as leaf chips?

Surely, leaves must have some nutritional value, so couldn’t we use them in salads and on sandwiches as a lettuce substitute. Let’s face it, if we can make lettuce taste good, leaves should be no problem.

If leaves were worth something, think how that would change the world!

More tress will get planted not so much for shade or beauty, but for the revenue source they’ve become.

Instead of blowing your leaves onto your neighbor’s yard when he’s not looking, you’ll be secretly sucking his over to your yard.

People will chase leaves blowing in the wind with the same fervor they chase dollar bills down the street.

They’ll be more room in landfills for worthy trash like outdated cell phones, record players, election signs, film cameras, encyclopedias, cassette players, bell bottoms, and landline phones. 

Busloads of tourists would trek to New England to see piles of leaves with the same fascination as people now go to Ft Knox or the US Mint to see mounds of money.

Lighting your cigar with a big leaf will replace lighting cigars with hundred bills as the ultimate expression of wealth.

If you’re falling behind in your bills, you’ll tell the bill collector that it’s almost fall and you’re expecting a bumper crop of leaves this year.

Nobody will burn leaves any more. That aroma associated with fall will disappear into folklore—remember when people burned leaves?

People will hold signs that say, ‘will work for leaves’.

Banks will look to take advantage---deposit your leaves and get a new toaster.

People will give trees names like cash-cow, money-maker, or bark o’ bucks.

When people mow leaves with mulching mowers, they’ll think of it as changing leaves into smaller denominations. 

And if leaves had value, when your kids ask you for money and you say, ‘you think money grows on trees’, they’ll say, ‘well yeah, dad’. 

 

 

Central Florida couple uses social media to raise funds for future family | Local News - WESH Home

Central Florida couple uses social media to raise funds for future family | Local News - WESH Home

Like Paul Newman Needs Friends

By Paul Greeley

 

     I had a private moment with the late Paul Newman. At least I think I did.

     In 1989, I was working at WDSU, the NBC affiliate in New Orleans. At the time, Newman was in town filming, Blaze, about the bombastic Louisiana governor, Earl Long, and his love affair with the Bourbon Street stripper, Blaze Starr.

     I walk into the edit suite one morning to find the general manager’s secretary struggling to make a VHS dub of a segment from that morning’s Today Show. When I ask her what she’s trying to do, she says Newman had seen a feature on the show about his filming the movie and it showed some archival footage of Earl Long that he wanted to study.

     “Newman himself called?”

     “I think so,” she said, “said he wanted us to take the dub to him at his hotel.”

     As a huge fan of Paul Newman, I see an opportunity.

     “You care if I take it to him?”

     “No, here’s the address.”

     I sit down at the control’s and make a nice clean dub with plenty of black at the front and even font in a title with the date. As I’m about to finish, I get an inspiration. Knowing that Newman is going to be watching this, this is my chance to ‘talk’ to him privately. So as soon as the segment is over, I pull down the microphone and punch up some black and started talking.

     “How you doing, Mr. Newman, this is Paul Greeley, the guy making this dub for you from the Today Show. I just want to say that I’m a huge fan of yours, especially your early movies like Sweet Bird of Youth, Long Hot Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud, and Cool Hand Luke. Look, if you ever want to get a beer and shoot some pool, I know this place, the F&M bar on Tchoupitoulas that’s open 24 hours.”

      I finish by giving him my phone number, tell him to call me anytime and to keep up the good work. I put a good label on the tape and jump in my car.

     Newman’s staying at the Soniat House on Chartres, from the outside, a small non-descript hotel near Esplanade. You don’t even know it’s there from the street. There are two big green doors at the address and when I knock, the manager opens one to reveal a big courtyard filled with beautiful flowers. I tell him I have a tape for Newman. He says he’ll give it to him. I tell him I have instructions to place it in Newman’s hands directly. He kind of smiles, says Newman isn’t here, he’s up the street shooting some scenes for the movie.

     I leave and walk to where I see some production trucks and camera equipment. I’m met by a young female production assistant wearing a headset, and tell her why I‘m there. She says Newman’s inside shooting some scenes and when I ask how long he’ll be, she says, “you know how production is, could be 10 minutes or 2 hours.”

     I tell her I’ll wait a while and grab a seat on the bed of a truck sitting there. After about a half hour, a beautiful woman comes around the corner from the direction of the hotel. She’s wearing a pretty summer dress, with a stylish matching hat and carrying a small purse. It’s Joanne Woodward. No entourage, no bodyguards, just her. She walks up to the production assistant and they start talking. After a few minutes, the production assistant points to me, and Joanne walks over to me.

     “I understand you’re the gentleman with the tape for my husband?”

     “Yes, I am,” I manage to say.

     “Look, all I have is this small purse, would you mind taking it back to our hotel around the corner?”

     I mention to Woodward that I had seen a picture of her by the early Louisiana photographer Fonville Winans, taken when she was a student at LSU.

     “Yes, I just love being back in New Orleans with all the great food here.”

     We talk for a few minutes and then I leave. I take the tape and give it to the hotel manager. He looks bemused.

     Strange as this may sound, I actually thought Newman would call. I guess I can stop waiting now.

 

Coffee, Tea or Tirade?

Coffee, Tea or Tirade?

By Paul Greeley

 

Did you hear the story about the flight attendant that grabbed some beer and triggered an inflatable emergency chute for a dramatic exit from a plane in New York?

When I fly, my idea of eternity is the time it takes the plane to stop at the terminal to when I actually get off. It seems like forever. So had I been on that flight, I would have shoved the attendant out of the way, grabbed his beers and been first to slide down. Wheeee!

I’m not surprised that someone did that, I just figured an impatient passenger would do it first. I’ve been on flights where a flight attendant appeals to passengers to let those with connecting flights get off first. That never happens. Instead, I’ve seen sweet little old ladies lower their shoulders like fullbacks and bowl over pregnant women with babies who are too slow getting down the aisle.

Flight attendants are on the front lines in what can be like a war between passengers and the airlines. Uniformed, visible, and available, with no chance of escape, they are easy targets taking the brunt of airline passenger frustration. Forget about giving weapons to under-cover marshals, it’s the flight attendants who should be packing heat.

I have some suggestions for how airlines can make more money and how passengers can save a few bucks.

Allow a few lucky passengers, for a fee, to exit the plane via that chute with drink in hand. If only the airlines can see how that attendant actually revealed a new money-maker for them and brought some fun back to flying for us! Seems like a natural for Southwest.

Charge passengers extra by their weight. It takes more fuel to fly a 300 pound adult than a 50 pound kid.

Passengers can pay extra to move their seat away from crying, fidgeting kids or snoring, drooling adults.

Smokers can pay a fee to open up a window and light up.

Passengers can avoid that luggage charge by putting on and wearing all the clothes they’ll need for their trip. It adds a whole new meaning to carry on.

Airlines should give passengers free drinks from wheels up to wheels down, but charge for use of the bathrooms. Do the math, hundreds of people guzzling drinks for a couple hours and only two bathrooms! I don’t know how much money airlines make charging for peanuts, but this idea has serious revenue potential.

Remove all the free air-sick bags. Then have the pilots bounce the plane in some fake turbulence and start a bidding process for each bag. If my seat mate looked green, I know I’d be kicking in a few bucks.

A friend told me a story about a cruel, but harmless prank he and his friends played on a flight attendant. They made a big show to the attendant that one of them was sick by barfing noisily into the bag. They rang the attendant to dispose of the full bag, and as the bag was passed to the attendant, my friend opened it, reached in and grabbed a piece of the contents and popped it into his mouth, savoring it with a flourish. Unknown to the attendant, the contents were really the remains of their dinner. Horrified, the attendant almost barfed herself. Had I been that attendant, I would have deployed that escape chute and been gone, even at 30,000 feet. Wheeee!

 

Mall Madness

Mall Madness

By Paul Greeley

If you see me at a shopping mall, call the police. 

Because I joke that the only way I’ll go shopping at a mall is at gun-point. 

It’s not the mall’s fault; it’s me. I have trouble resisting their temptations--the sights, the smells, the sounds are capable of driving me into a shopping frenzy. When I walk by the stores that sell music, electronics, sporting goods, food, even fashion, I have to steel myself, put my hand on my wallet, stay the course in the middle of the mall, like Ulysses tied to the mast so he won’t be tempted by the nymph’s singing on Sirens’ Island.

“Your spirit is strong”, I say to myself, “but your Visa is weak.”

On the few occasions I do have to shop for Christmas or someone’s birthday gift, I attack it like a well-planned military assault. Make a detailed plan, then get in and get out alive.

I don’t need anything anyway. I keep shoes forever. And men’s shoes haven’t changed much since the Ice Age. They recently unearthed a neandorthal wearing wing-tips. 

And when they do come out with something new, they look old, like those square-toed dress shoes they’re selling now-- put a buckle on them and you look like a pilgrim! Plus, they ain’t cheap. I saw a pair of shoes on clearance at a well-known, high-end dept store recently that cost more than the gross national product of many small countries!

I see other men like me sitting on those benches in the middle of the mall. They’re not relaxing; they’re resisting. We nod knowingly to each other in passing, silent encouragement to keep it up.

But these days even the middle of the mall has its own temptations. Now they have kiosks, huts, stands, shacks, and tables lined up everywhere you walk displaying everything from hats (lids!) cell phones, computers, sunglasses (shades!), make-up, hand-bags, insurance, carpeting, landscaping, tropical fish, even cars. And of course, jewelry.  

Nothing quite says love like when you buy your girlfriend a bracelet at a jewelry kiosk in the mall. 

Rosetta has a stand so you can practice Italian while you’re shopping and learn to say ‘ciao’ to your money.

By far, the strangest activity I recently witnessed at the mall was something new I’d never seen or heard about. 

A lady is sprawled out on a table while another lady hovers over her face working a long piece like some kind of magic ritual.  It looks like some kind of adolescent rite of passage you might see from Borneo on National Geographic. I watch in amazement wondering what in the world are they doing? I ask another lady who is signing up for the next appointment.

“Oh, it’s called eyebrow threading. It’s a lot less painful than wax.”

If they can have a side-show in public showing ladies getting their eyebrows plucked one by one right in the middle of the mall, what’s next? Plastic surgery?

“Honey, I’ll be back in an hour looking 20 years younger. I’m getting a face-lift at the mall.”

Definitely bring your Visa for that.

A Man’s Home is his Castle

     A man’s home is his castle.

     Until he puts it on the real estate market to sell it.

     Then it’s an open house for total strangers to come in, walk around, peek and probe, ridicule and criticize.

     The internet has dramatically changed how homes are marketed these days. Now, potential buyers can go on-line to a 360-degree camera view of your entire house, room by room, including the outside. The camera lens would make even a closet look like a cavernous gymnasium, every edge rounded and extended. When I first saw our house this way, I thought they shot the wrong house! Add the soothing music that accompanies the video, if you lean in close enough, you can just catch the faintest wisp of a home-made apple pie cooking in the oven.

     But before you even get to the pretty pictures and marketing, you’ll need to remove the clutter in your house. What is clutter? Pretty much anything and everything in your house that you treasure, and make the house feel distinctly like your home. Gone are the precious family photos hanging on the walls. Hide those knick-knacks, candles, and plants. Box up your movies, CDs, and books. And for God’s sake, make your bathrooms spotless---re-caulk every nook and cranny, put the shampoo, conditioner and soap under the sink. No towels should hang anywhere. Kitchens ought to look as sterile as an operating room.

       The barer the house, the better. If your house looks like no one has ever lived there, let alone lives there now, you get the idea.

     Now it’s time for the showings. That’s the time when every realtor who’s ever gotten a license can make an appointment to come to your house any day or night of the week with strangers who may or may not have the money to buy your house. Like the cable company, they make appointments in two or three hour blocks. At first, we’d all high-tail it out of there for two hours. Then as we got more used to the process, we’d wait until they’d ring the doorbell and then rush out the back door, dog in tow, to lurk across the street in the park or park up the street in the car. From both vantage points, we’d watch the front door, waiting for them to leave, so we could go home. If they stayed too long, we were mad, because we were inconvenienced. If they stayed too short, we were insulted because we figured they didn’t like what they saw.

     One Sunday night, 20 minutes after the showing window closed, and just after I opened a cold beer and started the barbecue, a realtor showed up with a whole family including 3 kids. I hate to admit it but as I backed out of the drive-way, I caught the realtor’s eye and tapped my wrist-watch menacingly. By the time I got back, my beer was warm.

     The dog, however, loved the whole process for all the walks he got.

     These days, almost immediately after the showings, you can go on-line to view the potential buyers and realtor comments about your house. But be prepared to be insulted!

      “The yard was too big.”

      “The yard is too small.”

      “Oh, I didn’t like the pre-fab cabinets.”

      “Loved the two-story windows that opened to the backyard.”

      “Hated those high windows—where are the blinds?”

     After failing to sell my house for 6 months, and about 150 showings, and investing about $10,000 in upgrades, I called our realtor up and told him to yank the sign out of the yard. Immediately after that, I grabbed a hammer and hung back the family portrait over the mantle, grabbed a cold beer and fired up the barbecue, because after all, a man’s home is his castle.

 

 

Animals Behaving Badly

I’m convinced animals are out to get us humans. The tipping point for me was the recent story about a hiker in Washington State being killed by a goat, potentially the first fatal attack on a human by a goat ever recorded. How does a goat kill someone? Officials aren’t exactly sure. One theory is the man was bent over smelling flowers when the goat head butted him. Witnesses say the goat stared down people trying to help. Hollywood’s  negotiating for the movie rights.

What more proof do we need that animals are indeed behaving badly, or in this case, behaving very baaadly. What’s next, killer guinea pigs!

Petting zoos should be put on high alert. Goats in petting zoos should be asked nicely to wear padded helmets and moms need to warn the kids not to turn their backs and bend over near the goats.

Animal behaviorists theorize that some animals may resent human’s haughty attitude at being at the top of the evolutionary food chain. They point to the fact that we openly eat animals as part of our diet and that some humans wear animal furs or skins.  They say animals might see this as taunting them. The rumor that the hiker had a lucky rabbit’s foot in his pocket has yet to be confirmed.

Animals killing people is not new of course. In Africa, lions and tigers have been killing and eating people for years. Research reveals these lions and tigers associate humans with the taste of chickens. That’s right; they think we taste like chicken.

Here in the US, animals kill people all the time. Bears, mountain lions, bobcats, alligators, snakes and sharks kill people regularly. I haven’t been in the ocean in years.

I believe that animals are conspiring against us. Even my own dog and cat look at me like they want to kill me if I don’t get them a treat or clean the litter box. It’s common for deer to jump in front of moving cars in suicide attacks against humans. And that airplane that had to land on the Hudson River in New York-- if you think its two engines were snuffed out at the exact same time by two geese was an accident, you’re just in denial.

I mean when bees become killers, the writing’s on the wall people. It’s only a matter of time now fire ants will go from swarming and stinging us to swarming and killing us.

Right now,  packs of bunnies and squirrels are in my yard smoking cigarettes and flashing gangs signs as they eye me menacingly, gesturing how they’re going to take me down with a high/low move—squirrels drop on my neck while bunnies grab me by my pant cuffs.

I’m never going outside again.