saulrosenbaum.com / vintage

I stopped in a Bagel Joint** for lunch the other day, it was a bit late and they appeared like they may have been preparing to close. I politely asked ‘yaopenstill?’ [it’s all one word, cause that’s pretty much how I said it] the counter gal who was busily jamming dozens of bagels into a clear plastic bag, confirmed that they where still open but that they didn’t have many bagels left. I asked what kind of bagels they had left, she told me that my bagel options consisted of ‘cranberry orange’ and ‘cinnamon raisin’…

Now mind you that although my mother is cuban, I’m 100% Jewish, to me neither of these options qualify to be called bagels, at best ‘cranberry orange’ and ‘cinnamon raisin’ bagels are hi-carb candy, or at the very least they’re poorly shaped muffins, either way, they both suck for lunch. While grasping for a comment, my eyes once again fell on the now full bag of bagels on the counter.
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Well, as I often do, I found myself at IKEA again today, but not my normal IKEA, but a brand spanking new one, 6 miles closer to my house. It was crowded, I was alone, it was raining, a recipe for disaster to be certain.

So while shopping, I noticed, this was NOT the typical ‘flesh’ show that I was used to, 20 something females in inappropriatly short tight and revealing garb, showing off tanned, toned and chiseled flesh, no this was 30, and sometimes 40 somthings showing me… Truth be told there are no words for what they where showing.

So it got me thinking, Do these women not own a mirror? or perhaps they think they look good? you would think that their tattoo artist Read More »

I’m slowly turning into Elvis, even though I’m aware of it, the process seems to be beyond my control, the similarities are, well …similar;

Both Elvis and I are male, we both have sideburns (although diferently styled), we both have weight issues and are fond of white velvet jumpsuits and large diamond encrusted belts with our names on it.(although to be fair although mine does say ‘Elvis’, I don’t recall ever seeing Elvis wearing a ‘Saul’ belt, but who knows really, it may have been one of those things he did in the privacy of Graceland).

I know what your thinking, saul based on that pittance of similarities, you could just be turning into an Elvis impersonator, and not actually ‘The King’ himself.. But wait, there’s more, Elvis was very fond of his mamma, and although I’ve never actually met Mrs. Presley, I feel I too would be partial to her… Elvis breathed in oxygen, I also breath in oxygen (and obviously at a higher frequency than ‘current’ Elvis), we both exhale carbon dioxide.. Startling isn’t it…

The similarities are far from over, later in life Elvis consumed a steady diet of Valium, Ethinamate, Dilaudid, Demerol, Percodan, Placidyl, Dexedrine, Biphetamine, Amytal, Quaalude, Carbrital, Cocaine hydrochloride and Ritalin. I LIVE right near a CVS Pharmacy..creepy huh.

I’m not really sure when the transformation will be complete… stay tuned

The other day I stopped in a ‘fancy-pants-bed’ place that features beds with air bladders in them so you can make the bed as soft or as hard as you like, the left and right side are adjustable independently, so you needn’ suffer through the ‘goldlocks’ syndrome just because of your bedmates preference.

I laid myself out on this bed picked up the remote control and started pushing away…25-35-45 — all seemed the same to me — 50-55-60-65 okay now we’re cooking, the bed seems kinda firmer, hard even, so the salesman comes over “blah, blah, blah…digital…normal people’s sleep number is usually between 15 & 35…blah, blah, blah”
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Yesterday for lunch I stopped at a local pizza joint for a couple of slices and a diet cola, I bought 3 slices, and told the guy that he need’nt heat them up, because I wasn’t going to eat them for ‘hours’, he put them on a paper plate and asked me…

“you need a bag?,” now there was no snappy retort, or abusive conversation I stop in this place fairly often and any form of abuse is just going to yeild me saliva on my edibles..so i chilled, at least verbally, I stared at him and nervously smiled, hadn’t I said I wasn’t eating them for hours? did he honestly think I was going to walk around with loose cold pizza on a ‘less than quality paper plate’, The whole exchange up to this point was very awkward, but wait..it got better.
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Funny, my previous post was a bit more ‘sadistic’, and I’ve gotten several comments that folks miss the more acerbic saul, the meaner saul, the saul that makes unsuspecting salesmen and ignorant cashiers cry.. well for ya’ll… this post is for you.

My phone has been ringing off the hook today, it’s mostly project related, but as I was drinking my loc-cal, low-carb, high-fiber, low-fat, high-fructose, medium-sodium partially homogonized somewhat carbonized coffee beverage, the phone rang, my caller-id let me know the call was from those oh-so helpful people at ‘WindowWizards’, usually I would ignore such a blatant sales call, but I happen to be in the market for replacement windows, so I picked the call up.
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So yesterday ‘T’ and myself went and had our eyes checked and purchased new glasses,

I elected to get a pair of black wireframe, and a pair of geek chic black plastic, someone should really let calvin klein know that the dot com boom is over, because 250 bucks for two hinges and some molded plastic is insane, or perhaps it’s me that’s insane for paying it.. but I have large eyes and a apple shaped head and most frames look stupid on me, the frames plus my 300+ dollar lenses [the hubble telescope has weaker lenses] put me over 900 bucks for two pairs of glasses. I can’t help but wonder what I would do if I couldn’t afford that [Not that i can, mind you..but really if I couldn’t afford even the lenses, what do people do? does public assistance pay for optical care? and to what point?

dream sequence coming:

“Mister Rosenbaum, with your optical coverage we can only adjust your vision to 20/75 and only in one eye, So you can forget about that fancy-pants graphics career”

dream sequence concluded …

The absolute worst part of buying glasses is that of course while your trying on the frames you can’t see yourself in the mirror [at least I can’t being nearsighted] So your forced to trust your shopping companion, or your at the mercy of the glasses people, and if that’s the case I can only assume you’ll ALWAYS look better in the 250 dollar frames… sigh, I hate spending money, I’m just so darn good at it.

‘T’ bought a really hot pair of librarianesqe ‘cat’ glasses, she usually only wears her glasses at night after her contacts come out, but she looked so very delectable in these frames I wouldn’t mind if she wore them full-time.

[originally posted 10.12.03]

[rescued from the wayback archive 1.19.08]

I want to start this entry by apologizing [in advance] if your of strong religious background , maybe some nice porn will offend you less [thanks for coming though]

Halloween approaches, a time for powerpuff girls, and snickers bars, at least I thought so, seems a church not 3 minutes from my house has other plans, see the only thing THEY know about halloween is that it’s a pagan holiday, and therefore assuming christ wouldn’t have approved [flashback to the first Halloween: Christ knocking on doors, pillowcase in hand looking for jugs of water to bring to the kegger down by the sphinx] Now I don’t dislike this church solely for there stand against individually sized milky way bars, no I have two other reasons to dislike them; reason one; they have a Starbucks IN THE CHURCH, I’m absolutely not exaggerating this at all reason two; The bathrooms in the beforementioned Starbucks are open to customers only [no you don’t have to be a parishioner, but you do have to at least buy a cookie, if you have to use the bathroom] so much for christian charity.

So I’ve been a Starbuck customer a few times [hey sometimes you have to go], the few time I’ve been there, I’ve made it a point to ‘test’ the boundries a bit. It seem comments like “jesus, that coffee’s hot” and “god damn that cake is delicious” are perfectly fine within ‘gods’ beanery, but try to walk with your coffee [or soy lattee chia in my case] into the chapel, well, let’s just say the monsignor has no sense of humor.

me: hey there father, how’s god today?

the collar: ummm yeah, you can’t bring that beverage into the church.

me: but I bought it here, did I miss a sign?

the collar: son, this is house of worship, a place of faith, we ask that all beverages stay in the coffee shop

me: father, when you say ‘WE’ does that include god?

the collar: I guess in a manner of speaking it does

me: so GOD is asking me to drink my coffee in the Starbucks?

[silence… at this point I was glad I was wearing sneakers, because I fully expected a lightning bolt to roast my beans on the spot]

the collar: I don’t really appreciate your attitude or your tone [jesus christ I’ve pissed off a priest, I thought forgiveness was in the job description]

me: I certainly don’t want to piss you off

the collar: is the vulgarity really necessary? this is a church after all

me: [looking around] father, we’re all alone here, are you seriously telling me your offended by the word ‘piss’?

the collar: We’re not alone here, we’re never alone anywhere [I cut him off at this point]

[we’d reached a line even I wasn’t willing to cross, I’ll not fuck with the dude’s beliefs, if he want to believe that god is truly a holy spirit within the church walls, and that god is the breeze blowing through the trees, well then, who am I to say he isn’t] I mean I only went in to use the bathroom anyhow. As I walked away he screamed after me “BLESS YOU!” … darn, I was positive that wasn’t the verb he was going to use.

So anyway, I think I, going back for Halloween, maybe dressed as the Pope [stay tuned for part 2: ‘what no candy?’]

Most people who know me now, didn’t know me ten years ago, but believe me when I tell you I was one of the evilest motherfuckers that ever lived [‘T’ will back me up on this] I would pick a fight just to hear you scream, and then laugh in your face. But those days are long gone, I’ve embraced the ‘zen’ of life and now very little bothers me [except having to rewire home theater systems]

Occasionally I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and a bit of the old saul peeks through, I usually lock myself in my studio on those days [like today] and I play music very loud.
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While en-route to a speaking engagement this morning I noticed a dark blue Buick on the road in front of me, this in itself is hardly unusual, but the myriad of bouncy-headed bobbling figures in the back window was a bid unnerving, all giving me an unappreciated affirmation to a question as of yet unasked, Read More »