You know you're really a Brown Neck....

you go to the mall and have to sit patiently in the Bare Minerals exhibit while the girls shop.

Oh well. At least you can take selfies with your fat Irish Friend.

Mr. Eddie kuài jì se

My first boss in accounting was my Dad's old boss. My Dad worked as an auditor for Irving Trust but to make extra money he used to do tax returns for people in the neighborhood. There were no computers in the 1960's and '70's and the forms were a lot simpler. You could go to the bank and get all the forms and instructions you needed for free. Then you would do the returns by hand. One copy for the government and one for you to keep. There was no such thing as a copy machine. You might do it with carbon paper but if you made a mistake you had to start over. So you just re wrote it. It was safer.

Then one year about 1970 my Dad got an after work job with an Public Accountant in the City. He would go a couple of nights a week and on Saturday to do tax returns. The way they worked it was one guy would do the return and the other guy would check it for addition and accuracy. Then there was a break through. They got a copy machine!

It was a "wet paper" copier. You would do the returns on stencil paper which was transparent. Then you would line it up with some treated paper and run it through a solution like a photograph. It would be exposed to light and come out soggy and dripping. You would lay the pages out to dry and then collate them and staple them together to send to the government. The machine was called a Bruning Copyflex. A xerox machine was something that you found in Governor Rockefeller's office not in an accountants joint.

I was about 12 years old and my Dad brought me to work with him. I would run the stuff through the machine and collate it and stuff and make coffee and sharpen pencils. My Mom would make these great big sandwiches that everyone would eat. Sausage and peppers. Meatballs. Chicken cutlets. Eddie was a Reform Jew who ate everything. He loved ham and sausages. And he loved my Mom's cooking. He was a very personable guy and had a great way about him. I was just a punk kid but I did notice that he had a lot of women as his clients. They all hugged him and kissed him and were overly affectionate with him. What I didn't get then is that he was banging them. Maybe not all of them. But a goodly amount of them. It was pretty funny. They would show up decked to the nines in fur coats and diamonds and tons of make up. Who wears a fur coat to get their taxes done?

One of them in paticular fascinated me. She was a knockout. Looked very much like Christina Hendricks except that she was a brunette. Everyone salivated when she came in with her fur coat. Eddie would close the door and get her information. He had to be pretty creative. You see she didn't have any reciepts or records. Just bank deposit slips. It wasn't till years later that I figured it out. She was a hooker. A high class hooker.

Just like Elaine Mardell in the Scudder stories. A sexy Jewish girl who made her way in the world depending on the kindness of strangers.

It's funny how art imitates real life.

I wish I could back and talk to Eddie and his client. I bet there are some great stories there.

I can't get a handle on my time management

I have been so busy that I do not have as much time to post as I would like. So I am sorry and will try to do better.

The corporate tax return deadline is March 15th and I am way behind. So I need a little breathing room but I will get to the finish line soon enough.

W-2's wait for no man.

Payroll taxes suck. And with the new 1099 rules for 2012.....well I am just glad I am retiring from accounting in a few weeks.

I love being in the store.

I have to tell you that I am enjoy working in the store, even when it is busy like today when they are filming in the store.

Accounting just doesn't do it for me anymore. Sorry guys.

Hey I actually got to rest a little today!

My client canceled my appointment with him for today and moved it to Tuesday. So I got a couple of hours extra sleep.

That's pretty cool.

Men at Work! Heh!

As you can probably tell, I have been very busy the past few days. I only do the accounting crap three days a week now and I had a lot of projects due.

But I promise a lot of good stuff tonight. Tales from Amy's Garden, Laura Bush's Diary and Tyler Perry's White House of Pain are in the works.

Oh and something with Queen La-Queefa and her grandmothers service in the A-Queefer Corps if I can figure it out.

Stay tuned.

Tsing Tao Mr. Jimmee!!!!!!!!!!

When I first started working as a baby accountant back in 1973 my first boss Eddie was an old school Jewish accountant who had two types of accounts: garment center firms and Chinese restaurants. Eddie was the king of Chinese restaurants and he had about twenty five different accounts. Of course in those days they paid $50 dollars a month and it was a big deal when we raised them to $100. When I was still in high school I would come with him in the summer time or on my free time to help do the books. Now we didn’t have no stinkin’ computers, we had pencils and green accounting paper and a giant adding machine which was a huge innovation at the time. He got all these restaurants because when a couple of waiters could save enough to open their own joint they would hire Eddy to do everything. We would get the corporation set up and had a hook with the liquor authority to get them a license in a couple of days and they were off to the rickshaw races. So whenever we came into one of these restaurants they would be all happy because they would want to ask question about how they could set up their own joint. You see in those days all of the immigrants wanted to start businesses and were the hardest working guys in the egg roll business. I am sure it is the same today and I think a lot of the anti immigrant yahoos should meet some of those guys who are more fucking Republican than they could ever be.

Now all of the Chinamen would call Eddie by two names. Kuài jì which means accountant and sounded like Quai-G-See. Or they would call him Mr. Eddie which made me laugh when I told them about Mr. Ed the talking horse. So they started calling him Mr. Eddie Quai-G-See. And of course they called me Mr. Jimmie even though I was just a punk kid. Now I was going there for years since I was about 14 years old and when I graduated college Eddie sold his firm to a couple of guys from the Big Eight Accounting firm who wanted to start their own practice and I came along with the copy machines and the file cabinets. Anyway I was always going to my favorite restaurant on the corner of 46th and Second Avenue. I would take the other guys from the firm to eat there. Sometimes the new guys would go with me as a training episode to learn how to do the books the old school way. We would get there in between lunch and dinner and rush to get all the bank rec’s and write up done before the dinner crowd got in. But the perks we used to have was that we would eat lunch there and occasionally have dinner before we went on a pub crawl up Second Avenue to all the pick up joints like Runyans and Jamisons and Fitzgeralds and what not. Anyway the big perk was that they would never ever charge me for beer. They served my favorite Chinese beer Tsing Tao which is a great Chinese larger that is perfect when you are having a spicy plate of Szechwan dumplings. Man dumplings and Tsing Tao were as good as you get. Of course it also gave me a new nickname, Tsing Tao Mr. Jimmee. When they saw me coming in the door they would start shouting that out and cracking a beer before I even got to sit down. My buddies loved that joint because of course we could drink a lot of beer. But we would also order tons of food because we were all big guys and ate two or three appetizers and two main courses apiece so the owners got their money and the waiters were tipped very well by drunken stuffed fat guys.

So this is a long and rambling story but I do have a point. I had to go see one of my old clients who is about 86 years old now. He used to love to go out for a drink when he would bring his taxes in. When my office was in the city we would hit one of the Irish pubs or this Chinese restaurant which was only two blocks from his house. He is too old to get out now so I had to go to his apartment to pick up the papers. And when I was finished I realized on was on Second Avenue only two blocks away from the restaurant. Now the wife doesn’t like greasy Chinese food because it upsets her and we usually eat Thai food now because it is a lot fresher and they don’t use MSG. But I thought to myself, hmmmmmmm. Maybe I can sneak into the restaurant for a quick plate of dumplings and a few Tsing Tao’s. I mean I haven’t been there in about five years because I never had a reason to be so far over on the East Side. I haven’t been doing their taxes for about fifteen years because we sold all the accounts because they were getting to be more trouble than they were worth money wise and audit wise and stuff. So I had kind of lost contact with them. So why not go in and say hello right? Well I walk the two blocks and mouth is watering and I am ready for the dumplings with the hot sauce and maybe a bowl of hot and sour soup and some egg rolls and Beef with Chinese Vegetables. I get to the store.

It’s a Turkish restaurant now.

That was thirty years no forty years ago man. Things change. The city changes. Things are different now.

So I walked to subway with slumped shoulders. I could still taste those dumplings. That hot and sour soup. And especially the Tsing Tao. When I got back home I went to Nelson’s bodega next door and bought a six-pack of Tsing Tao. We will be getting Thai food tonight and I will raise a glass to all those restaurant guys and most of all to Mr. Eddie Quai-G-See.

The world turns man.

Time to relax

Well now it is time to relax a little. The returns are done or the extensions are filed. We are closing the store early and relaxing a little. I think I might have a cocktail or three. I try not to make a pig out of myself but as my favorite philosopher Popeye used to "I am what I am and that's all that I am." See ya tomorrow.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last extension is in the mail and you can stick a fork in this years tax season at 4pm on

April 15th. This year was the worst and I hope it can be my last and I can work in the store full time. The tax bills next year especially for New York State will be horrendous and I don't want to deal with the crybabies and bullshit. The funniest shit is that the most liberal douches who want to spend on every fucking program are the ones who squeal the worst when they have taxes due. Well I hope that next year I can tell them to go screw.

It's crunch time.

Well it's crunch time for taxes and I will be too busy to post much today. These taxes have been a very heavy burden this year and I feel like I have the weight of the world that I am trying to push.

So I want to leave you with some women weightlifter imagery and remind you what the commentator said when he saw this woman in action.

"Holy cow take a look at that snatch!"

Knock yourself out.

While the rest of you are busy wrestling a pig, so to speak, I am busy wrestling with some tax returns so no posts till later. So wrestle among yourselves.

Hey I am really busy again.

I am swamped again so talk among yourselfs. Or date among yourselfs. Or whatever. Just keep it clean.

It's a crime I tell ya!!!

I am so busy it is a freakin' crime. We had to go to a vendor yesterday to buy fall and I was out all day and couldn't get to my accounting bullshit until around 10 at night. So it was a long night and I had no time to post. I hope to fix that soon. I mean I didn't review the Idol when it was freakin' Michael Jackson night. That had to be a hot mess.

I hope to have some good shit up tonight. No not that kind of good shit Titus. The other kind.

Hey March 15th is a big deadline.

Not many people realize that March 15th is almost as big a deadline as April 15th. March 15th is when most "C" corporate and Subchapter S corporate returns are due. So I am swamped with lots of accounting bullshit and won't really be posting until tonight.

But stay tuned for some Celebrity Apprentice and Laura Bush's diary.

To amuse yourself go down a few posts and check out the Professor's cans. She says they are spectacular.

The work is piling up.

Boy I am really busy today and will be posting more tonight.

Hey I'm swamped.

Hey I am swamped with accounting bullshit today so I won't be posting until later tonight. Sorry.

Hey the pastrami on rye is hanging in there!

The pastrami on rye is hanging in there as a strong second.

I used to enjoy eating a pastrami on rye in my first job. I was just a kid about 13 and I went to work with my dad on the weekends when he did taxes to pick up extra money. He worked for this old jewish accountant who became my friend and mentor for many years. Now he was the first guy I ever saw who pulled the lunch ploy. What that was he bought breakfast and lunch for the whole office. Seems very nice right. But what that did is made sure everyone ate and was done in about ten minutes or maybe twenty at the outside. Nobody took an hour. He would send me out to get sandwiches and it was always a big treat when I would go to the Blarney Stone to get corn beef and brisket and pastrami sandwiches. I kinka liked the brisket a little better but the pastrami was good stuff. We washed it down with Dr Brown's cream soda or black cherry or his celery tonic. Man that was good eating.

I have to change jobs.

You know I really want to quit accounting. I mean my wife has the store but I would like to be doing something else.

You know when I was in school I always dreamed of being the camel toe inspector for space suits. And I want my freakin' jetpack.

Weren't we all supposed to have jetpacks in the year 2000!

What a gyp.

Hey I am busy allright?

I am a little busy today doing my accounting bullshit so I will not be posting until later in the evening. Talk amongst yourselves. And Meade keep your hand out of your pants. There is no place for that in homeroom.