Operation Optimism: An Interview III

My New Jersey friend Alec Borenstein is an attorney and a life coach.

He has this Facebook group “Operation Optimism.”

“We’re constantly bombarded with negative imagery,” says Alec. “If you just watch the 11pm news, you will see that almost every story is about what we should be afraid of, what we should run from. All these different ways of closing ourselves off as people. With Operation Optimism, I want to create a community of people who focus on what is going well in the world.”

I interview Alec at my hovel on Sunday.

“We’re not going to be unreasonably optimistic,” he says. “The idea is to understand the reality of our situation and to change it, to move towards a more positive direction.”

“If you focus on what is going well in your life, you can change more effectively.”

Alec’s father Abraham is also an attorney as well as a Broadway producer.

 

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Operation Optimism: An Interview II

My New Jersey friend Alec Borenstein is an attorney and a life coach.

He has this Facebook group “Operation Optimism.”

“We’re constantly bombarded with negative imagery,” says Alec. “If you just watch the 11pm news, you will see that almost every story is about what we should be afraid of, what we should run from. All these different ways of closing ourselves off as people. With Operation Optimism, I want to create a community of people who focus on what is going well in the world.”

I interview Alec at my hovel on Sunday.

“We’re not going to be unreasonably optimistic,” he says. “The idea is to understand the reality of our situation and to change it, to move towards a more positive direction.”

“If you focus on what is going well in your life, you can change more effectively.”

Alec’s father Abraham is also an attorney as well as a Broadway producer.

 

.

Operation Optimism: An Interview

My New Jersey friend Alec Borenstein is an attorney and a life coach.

He has this Facebook group “Operation Optimism.”

“We’re constantly bombarded with negative imagery,” says Alec. “If you just watch the 11pm news, you will see that almost every story is about what we should be afraid of, what we should run from. All these different ways of closing ourselves off as people. With Operation Optimism, I want to create a community of people who focus on what is going well in the world.”

I interview Alec at my hovel on Sunday.

“We’re not going to be unreasonably optimistic,” he says. “The idea is to understand the reality of our situation and to change it, to move towards a more positive direction.”

“If you focus on what is going well in your life, you can change more effectively.”

Alec’s father Abraham is also an attorney as well as a Broadway producer.

 

.

Tom Sowell Discusses His New Book – The Housing Boom and Bust

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=14592 Dennis Prager talked to economist Tom Sowell, 79, on Dec. 15, 2009 about his new book “The Housing Boom and Bust”.

Hitler finds out YICC let Rabbi Weiner go!

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15280 Hitler was so excited to finally see Rabbi Weiner in action at Young Israel of Century City, to only find out that YICC let him leave….to Cedars.

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa XI

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 The asking should occur either in person or over the phone, sometimes over e-mail, rarely over Facebook, and never over text.

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa X

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 Dec. 28, 2009, I interviewed Jewish Journal singles columnist Orit Arfa about her new book on the tests women give men. The Game: Inside the Secret Society of Pickup

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa VII

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 Dec. 28, 2009, I purposefully put my bed by the bathroom door because the feng shui experts said this was the best way to stay chaste.

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa IX

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 There is an act that seems to require more courage from men than asking a boss for a raise, than changing a career path, or even than fighting in a war. It is

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa VIII

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 It doesn’t have to be money. It can be his confidence, his positivity, his values, the way he treats a woman, the strength he projects. If hot women, and you want hot

Dating Columnist Orit Arfa VI

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=15157 We had lots of moths flying through the hovel and chirping crickets, which I fended off with my bare hands so Orit would feel safe.

Dr. Spielvogel - I Need Your Help

"Dr. Spielvogel," he says, "I'm having a problem that I often have. It's with my GF. It's the most important relationship in my life. I have trouble telling her in the moment when I am feeling bad. So I tend to store up my resentment.

"I've become emotionally frozen.

"Her birthday was the other day. We planned to spend it together but flexible. She might have brunch or dinner with friends.

"Two days before, I get this mass email with all the plans for her birthday. It didn't make me feel special. I got the same notice as 50 other people. It felt like a slap in the face. I didn't feel special. It said to me, I don't care if you want to do this activity or not. I don't care how you feel about this. I'm indifferent to you. If you want to spend my birthday with me, you'll do it my way or not at all.

"I didn't say anything in the moment. She's very similar to my GF Peppy from 2000. She's happy, peppy, everything's great, and if I express any pain at her actions, then I'm a dick.

"She's always doing things that I can't point to as wrong, but they just make me feel bad. But if I voice my pain, I feel like a dick. She doesn't want to explain, justify or defend herself, but always does if I voice objection, and then she's pissed at me, and she punishes me by standing me up, maintaining radio silence or the like.

"She comes over to pick me up for her birthday celebration. She's frantic and filled with anxiety. As she's driving, she says she took a medication to slow her heartbeat and a tranquilizer. We keep getting close to getting into accidents. This is a girl who's driven me in the past after a couple of wines over dinner. Her cell phone is buzzing. I say, 'Please don't answer that.'

"We're cruising along at 60mph on the 10 East and she says, 'I'm not answering it. I just want to see who's calling.' So she picks up her phone and looks at who's calling. And in that time, we cover about 100 yards.

"So I'm feeling super unsafe. I often feel unsafe around her. I wish she would've told me that she'd taken a valium before she picked me up. I could've driven or made alternate plans.

"I don't say anything because I don't want to have a conflict while she's driving.

"I don't connect with her at all during the celebration. I get along fine with her friends. We come back to the hovel. She's all giddy as she listens to the messages on her phone wishing her happy birthday.

"I have to eat. She lies down. And boom, she goes to sleep. And she's out.

"She'd gone from super-high to catatonic in ten minutes. It was weird.

"I felt left out the whole day. I felt left out when she was super-high and I felt left-out when she was catatonic. By 11pm, I wanted her to leave and I put on the lights and she got up and left.

"She tells me about a friend from working asking her to the movies that week. It didn't feel good to hear. She wasn't asking me how I would feel about that. She doesn't ask me how I would feel about any of her choices. She just tells me her decisions and I can like it or lump it. I don't feel special. I feel the object of her contempt."

"On her side, she rejects having to explain herself. I don't want her to feel like she has to explain herself when I voice my pain. I just want her to hear me."

Couldn't Keep Attention During Sex

A friend calls. "Do you know who Aarielle Alexis is?"

Luke: "No."

Friend: "You interviewed her. I Googled her and the first thing that comes up is an interview with you. My friend went over to her house. She's a prostitute now. He's like, this is the weirdest woman he's ever had sex with. Ever. He's telling me these wild stories. I told him, go online. Luke has an interview. Three minutes could've told you this.

"He said she couldn't even keep attention during sex. He was having sex with her and she'd go answer the phone. He was paying for it."

Luke: "Ahh. I really liked her. She was cute and sweet."

Friend: "All these industry girls are now into prostitution. Porn is dead. It's really bad. He tells me that he's on all the websites and it's depressing because the porn stars have a superior complex. They think they're not prostitutes. He likes having sex with prostitutes because they make him feel good. These girls don't. They criticize him. They tell him they're doing this shoot tomorrow. He's like, I'm not paying for that.

"He's going back to his mistress, a B-actress in Hollywood."

"Aarielle is so scatter-shot. How can one person have so much going on? Drama for me is if the Captain Crunch ran out in the morning."

"Bobby Kasirer is a good looking guy for a Jew."

Luke: "Who were his friends?"

Friend: "Everybody. He was something you'll never be -- he was on the board at Beth Jacob. I love how Kasirer stole money to buy a place in Utah and then he f---ed the contractors too."

Luke: "Who are his friends today?"

Friend: "Nobody will talk to them."

Jeff emails: "These Spinka guys are unbelievable. Whenever the questions get difficult, they require a Yiddish translator."

Craigslist Insights

Joe emails: One of my more disreputable habits is trolling the personal ads on Craigslist to check out the women offering their services for a "sugar daddy." I read these ads, look at the photos, and otherwise form my stereotypes. The number of asian women trying to sell themselves to the the White Man is striking. (There are also quite a few black women looking for the Perfect White Man, but I assume that just as in real life, nobody bothers paying any attention to them.) I know it is wrong of me to generalize about all Asian women based on what one sees on Craigslist, but damn - these Asian women dye their hair platinum blond, shave or die everything else, get breast jobs, and often do something to their eyes to make them look even whiter. But in the end, they never quite pull it off, and one knows that one is looking at an Asian woman who is doing everything in her power to look white. Again and on aethetic grounds alone, I prefer the look of white women over all others.

Upon further reflection the above is really unfair - I'm judging an entire race based on that tiny subset trying to sell itself on Craigslist. The Asian women my white friends have married have tended to be more than presentable in the looks department, level-headed, good to great mothers and suitable wives. The White Woman would do well to learn from such women before running off to marry some rich athlete of uncertain values and lineage.

Frank emails: I received an interesting news item from one of my sources.

The Rev. Al Sharpton held a press conference today to blast Tiger Woods for the lack of diversity among his mistresses. Sharpton claims that the lack of African-American women among Woods’ harem will have a negative affect on the black community, specifically young black girls.

“Why is it that a man who calls himself black can’t bring himself to cheat on his wife with a black woman?” said Sharpton, speaking to a group of supporters in Harlem. “What does it say to young black girls everywhere when you pass them over? Shame on you, Tiger Woods. What would your daddy say?”

Sharpton, who has long championed taking black women as mistresses, said that today’s black athletes need to stop neglecting black women when it comes to extramarital affairs, and should follow the examples of positive black role models such as Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom cheated on their wives with black women. Sharpton also stressed that cheating with African-American women would help the black community financially by giving black girls the chance to sell their stories to tabloids and gossip magazines.

Added Sharpton, “I’m not asking you to not cheat on your wives, I’m just asking you to give back to your own community.”

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman IX

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 You get pegged really early about whether you are pretty or not. Then you’re really conscious of what the pretty girls have. And yes, now I find out that they had eat

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman VIII

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 Writing became the focus of my life, without donuts. I ended up going to grad school. I was like the crippled girl getting to work. I got straight As at grad school.

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman VII

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 Didn’t want to finish it. I was about to crinkle it up and throw it in the trash and he made me read what I had. And then he said, isn’t that interesting? He found something.

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman VI

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 I adored my father. I just wanted to get to know him. I always thought of him as my prince. I could only see him summers. I’d spend all year looking forward to seeing

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman II

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 I was the new kid in school. I always felt like a martian, being Jewish, having a divorced parent, no brothers and sisters. I though this is going to be make me more

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman IV

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 I had this great group. It was the funnest time of my life. The most social time at such a pivotal age. Then Liz and I both loved Allen and then Allen picked Liz. I

Writing Teacher Terrie Silverman III

http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=13998 Even though I adored my father, I didn’t want to tell anyone. I found that all I had to say when anyone asked about my father was, They’re divorced and then no more