You never stop worrying about losing your job, unless you’re retired. Then you’re always worried about losing your mind.

Different work ethics exist today. We boomers went on vacation and could only be reached via a hotel landline or one of those Motorola brick phones, like the one I had in the 80s.

Even then, it was too costly to have my staff call. I just told them to make a decision based on three things:

• will I get fired,
• will Barry get fired, and
• will we get sued.

I told them if the answer was no to all these questions, they could safely proceed. Read More

I was sitting at Ned’s Bar, last week, across the street from Madison Square Park, with my old friend Jeff. As we mused about life, like all Boomers do, he said: “loss in inevitable in life, unless you’re a hermit.” He certainly got that right: If we never connect with people, we won’t experience sorrow, but we also won’t experience love. Isn’t that one of life’s cruelest ironies? Read More

I ran into a friend last week who introduced her son, saying, “Say hi to Kyle, brought to you by the Unified School District and Pepsi, the choice of a new generation.”

Well, not really, but, in the past few years, many school districts have signed multi-million dollar marketing and vending partnerships whereby the company becomes the schools’ exclusive provider of vending machines of water and fruit juice. The revenue is to be used to create sponsorships supporting sports and physical education. One can only hope. Read More

I was going through boxes of folders the other day and found some great memories: photos, my “Polyester, The Movie” smell-o-vision card, news articles that I wrote or were written about me, an old I.D. bracelet that I gave – and got back – from girls in junior high school and more. Read More

America will soon note the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. A few years ago, I visited Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Hanoi and Da Nang. For a brief time, I got to know some of the people from the reunited country. Read More

I was driving to Tucson the other day, when I passed a billboard for the U.S. Border Patrol. On the sign, there was a big picture of a guy called Ernesto Guevera. Under aliases, it listed “The Axe,” “Spike” and “Che.” Guys have nicknames. Women do not. Read More

There are many things I thought I’d be doing at 62 – though one of them was not living to be 62. No, there wasn’t a family illness or a death wish involved; I just couldn’t comprehend, at 30, what I’d be doing at twice that age. Read More

The other day, I heard a comedienne tell a story about an experience that she had flying Delta, in coach. She said that the flight attendant walked through the aisle and asked if anyone wanted to read The Wall Street Journal. She remarked: “If I was the kind of person who read that paper, I’d be up front instead of back here!” Read More

Billy Joel sang: “Don’t go changing… I love you just the way you are.” Who are we kidding? We chose our partners in business and life because we DO want to change them and we really don’t love them just the way they are. Read More

I reflected today on my 40th high school reunion, three years ago. I recall I went back on my diet five months before the event. I was raring to go and Hope and I had figured out the “do I go” or “do I stay” spousal thing. Read More