God Forbid You Lose Your Health Insurance

Let's get serious for a minute. Being unemployed is wicked and wearisome enough, but the albatross of maintaining health insurance has potential to make a bad situation utterly merciless.

After I was laid off from Billboard in March 2009, I was able to maintain my health insurance via COBRA for 18 months. It was blessedly subsidized for nine months, thanks to an Obama stimulus bill, allowing me to pay about $140 a month for the same benefits/doctor I was accustomed to. What a gift. Then COBRA jumped to $405 a month—the full amount for my individual policy for health, dental and vision insurance—alarming but a godsend.

However, at the end of the 18th month, which I will reach September 30, I will suddenly be without healthcare. Boom—cut off, no questions asked. That leaves me only with the option of shopping for an individual health insurance policy—mind you, if anyone lets healthcare coverage lapse for even a day, you invite the near certainty of being turned down for a free agent policy. To get insurance you better already have insurance.

I dunno what Obama's public health insurance plan will eventually hold for Americans, but let me tell you: Not having a job and finding affordable healthcare is akin to carving Mount Rushmore with a nail file.

Might being a member of industry organizations help? Grammy voting member? The Freelancers Union? Despite lots of bravado, ultimately to qualify, you need three legs and two heads. No luck. Next up: Three days scouring the web for an indie NY plan. Phone calls and emails with agents. Fortunately, I qualify for Healthy New York, which offers reduced rates if you meet specific criteria—including limited income. Because my Census gig ended earlier this month and I am currently earning, uh, zero, I scored.

So I met with an Atlantis rep today. Consumer reviews aren't great, but for $310 a month, I am covered HMO-style for a year. I lose my decade-long primary health care physician, but I have a $20 co-pay for most everything, including meds... I'm thankful. I don't have to worry about walking in front of a bus. If I get real real sick, I have care and drugs.

Amazing... Most of us get a job and sign onto the company's healthcare without a second thought. I always have. Not having a full-time job for so long has opened my eyes to how backward our healthcare system is. And with 9.6% unemployment, I'm sure as hell not alone.

Most every other nation has public healthcare that works; once again, the United States is far behind the curve. I'm willing to pay my way, happy to do it. But jumping through hoops like a dog is humiliating and scary. For sure, it doesn't feel much like the American way.

A Day Well Done/Happy Birthday, Christa!

The last week has utterly sucked wind. The reaction I had to an antibiotic that I finished last Saturday continues to leave me 1) dizzy 2) shaky/trembly 3) with intensive muscular aches 4) sensitivity to light 5) insomnia... to the point that I've pretty much been afraid to leave the apartment this week. It appears the interaction with a maintenance med I take was a prescription for disaster... I am still awaiting equilibrium....

But I finally got my ass moving on Friday, if still walking up the street like a drunkard. Here's da day:

7a: Up and at 'em. Thanks to Ambein, I finally got enough sleep to attack the day amid dawn's early light.


10:30a: I signed on to a mystery shop assignment to watch all previews at a Brooklyn Heights movie theater preceding three matinee showings of "Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D." Got into the theater free, recorded audience reaction to previews at 11:10a, 11:50a and 12:30p, and was on my way. $14 earned, cool cats.

12:45p: As I mentioned, we auditioned for a makeover on HGTV's "Dear Genevieve" and made the cut! So I stopped by to talk with my coop's building manager to make sure I fill out all proper paperwork and cross every "t."

1p: Mystery shop 2 for the day! McDonald's in downtown BK. Yes, there is such a thing as free lunch—plus $7.50 in my pocket for evaluating the store, from countertops and floors to bathrooms and condiment station.

2p: Met with Andy, the rep for Atlantis Insurance. Thankfully, signed up for a plan once my COBRA expires at the end of the month.

3:30p: Strategy call with Ghia to talk ideas about collaborating on a multi-media project together. This is the future... I hope.

5p: I'll drink to that. Gin and soda, please.

6p: Going stir crazy and wholly irritated that my pepes are having a birthday dinner in the city for Christa, and I'm too wobbly to leave the apartment. Fuck it. Off I go. First time I've been in Manhattan in two weeks. That's a weird feeling.7p: My pals applaud when I creak into the restaurant. I'm horrified. I stay an hour, have a drink, satiate myself with companionship and head home.8:30p: It's a weekend in New York and you can't get there from here! The R train takes me over Manhattan Bridge and deep into Brooklyn, forcing me to loop back to get home. That's the MTA, fuck you very much.

9:30p: Online job-hunting, the usual colossal waste of time. I find nothing... I'll drink to that...

1a: Goodnight, cool cats. A packed day, at last. Dream on.

We Made The Cut: A Bedroom Makeover On HGTV's "Dear Genevieve"!

Life is sweet, but every once in a while you get a velvet-coated curve ball that truly makes you appreciate the spontaneous good that occasionally comes one's way. In June, I responded to a Facebook inquiry for New York-area rooms in need of a makeover for HGTV's "Dear Genevieve." As I outlined in a previous post, we were lucky enough to audition last month for a spot on the show.

Get this: We made it!! I heard from a producer within days who assured that Ayhan and I have been green-lighted for a bedroom makeover. Shit. Oh, shit! We are scheduled for our magic reno Jan. 10-14, 2011, all done in five days. As a New Yorker living in a coop, I have to jump through hoops to get board approval, but today I met with my building manager, discussed the details and got a thumbs up that as long as I fill out blah and get blah insurance, we should be good to go!

In the Aug. 21 post after our audition, I wrote, "Can you imagine?" Now, believe me, all I do is imagine, hoping and praying this will come to be.

And you can bet, I'll report every step right here on The Smoking Nun. Please cross your fingers. Damn, this is good shit, huh?

WSJ: You (Sadly) Get What You Pay For

WSJ legal editor Ashby Jones seems to have some journalistic chops as a former reporter for The Deal and American Lawyer Media, but the former litigator/federal judge clerk can't hide behind the trend to relinquish journalistic expertise in favor of a publication's credibility-costing bottom line. This is lazy and flawed writing. I wish I could say it's the first time I've seen such in the Wall Street Journal. You get what you pay for.Perhaps the suffering print business might bring back quality writers with experience who know how to put words together? A novel idea.

Nepotism Allows Ugly Kid To Find Fame

Nepotism is alive and well, cool cats. Willow Smith, the 9-year-old daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith just happened to score a recording contract with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. I'm sure it has everything to do with talent—since Ms. Smith is arguably the ugliest pre-teen alive.

Her first single “Whip My Hair” must be life-changing, because Jay-Z gushed about the grotesque girl, "She has an energy and enthusiasm about her music that is truly infectious. It’s rare to find an artist with such innate talent and creativity at such a young age.”

It's also rare to find a 9 year old millionaire whose familial connections won't hurt Roc Nation a bit. Bless her heart; let's hope the kid can sing, cause her precocious imaging is making me spit up in my mouth.

Blue Willow: An Official Obsession!

Hurrah! As one who is thankfully not prone to collecting all sorts of nonsense simply for the sake of "having" (I live in a 1,000-sf apartment, for god's sake), it feels indulgent and naughty to have just spent more than an hour perusing every Blue Willow item on ebay—54 full pages of crap.

Thankfully, I managed to skip bidding on the teacup and teapot earrings set, though I was damn close to nabbing the dish towel and even closer to grabbing the butter dish... but phew, I managed to maintain a modicum of restraint. Well, kind of. I did put in lowball bids for a set of four drinking glasses and another for a frosted glass tumbler.

But you bet your bottom blue dollar I put in serious auction bids for both a set of 8 dinner plates and a grouping of a cake plate, vegetable bowl, dinner plate, coffee cup saucer and dessert plate. I mean, how could I resist—especially when to my disdain, today, when I received my Walmart $10 gift card and was all ready to purchase a second set of 20 all nice and neat, suddenly, it's not only out of stock, but has disappeared from the webbie. The fucking nerve.

Fortunately, cool cats, there's fun to come. I did lay out $170 for a Buy It Now offering for a 47-piece assorted set in primo condition, which includes 12 dinner plates(!), 6 soup bowls, 5 medium-size plates, 7 medium-size bowls, 2 serving bowls, 6 saucers & 6 cups—and, get this, Tom—salt & pepper shakers and a sugar bowl with lid. Score!!! And because I used ebay's Bill It Later, I'll get 20% back on the purchase, which should reward me enough to buy the porcelain double light-switch plate for the kitchen. Oh, yeah! Insomnia is FUN!Above: MINE! Can you believe this bounty?!

Family History: You've Only Got One Chance

It's amazing how ignorant children can remain of their parents' heritage—until they finally have the gumption to ask questions. I spent 35 years talking with my folks about my job, their health and the weather, before I finally recognized the precious resource I had in simply talking to Evelyn & Dan and asking all the things that I wondered—didn't remember or never knew.

Poppy is 86, Mamer is 83 and they are in such fortunate health—as so many of their contemporaries succumb to Alzheimers or... inevitably drop dead. In either instance, a lifetime of knowledge is lost. Thank god I got it together before it's too late and started asking the parents how they met, about their courting, the details of their marriage and so on.

Each time I return to Lynchburg, I swipe more and more photos from their attic, and as I go through them, I ask a mountain of questions. Not only do I take delight in watching them bond again over the memories, but I listen—really listen—so that I may become the family memory bank if and when there's no one else to have the answers.

When I was home for my 30-year high school reunion last month, Poppy shared stories about his service in WWII... time in China, a long way from home for a country boy from Virginia. He gave me a half-dozen photos to bring back to New York to filter through my various photo editing programs, and the results are astounding. I share them with the universal knowledge that we all have family histories that are as universal. They enrich our roots, give us touchstones on how we all fit into American (or global) milestones. In a word: precious.Dad with his fellow servicemen at a club in China. He's on the bottom right.
Poppy in an authentic rickshaw in China. Note the entrance-way in the background.
Dad, middle, with two of his WWII buddies.
In training, with a buddy, in the barracks.
With the same dude, Dad on the left. He's all of 20-21 here.
Hilarious... Dad playing in the E.C. High Glass High School band—which I was a member of some 30+ years later. He's on drums, barely visible in the middle. I swear, that's Abe Lincoln standing on the left.

Mike Noon In Da House

Always a pleasure when Ayhan welcomes hot... I mean, talented musicians to the 2C Studios here in Brooklyn Heights. Today, Mike Moon rapped on the song "Liar," with vocals by Erica Jacob.Mr. Moon's appearance here follows Peter Elias a couple weeks ago, writing lyrics for an upcoming recording session. Keep 'em coming!

God Bless The Elderly

This little lady is doing better than I am at the moment, with my friggin dizziness issues via five days on a super-powered antibiotic. She's blind, deaf, has no teeth, but goddammit, Kirby's will to live at 17+ years old is an example for all. I pray by the time I'm her equivalent age, I'll still be able to hit the mark with poop and pee as well as she. (Photo: Patrick Eves)Above, Kirbisha manhandles a plate of tuna fish leftovers.

No ZZZ For The Weary

It started as simple bronchitis. The doc prescribed Azithromycin. Six tabs in five days. No big deal... I thought. Seven days later, I'm so dizzy I'm afraid I'll faint when I rise (orthostatic hypotension). Light kills my eyes. I'm trembly and my head is fuzzy.

And perhaps the worst: I simply cannot sleep. Saturday it was 5:30 am when I drifted, Sunday I gave up and got up at 3 a.m. Now it's 2 a.m. and I've surrendered again. I'd take a walk if I didn't think I'd faint and be scooped up and taken to the city dump... Oh god, give me slumber...