views

for openers

Political Ads
And Online
Buying —
Painful!

Editor‘s Note: This humor column was
written before the tragic shooting at the
Pittsburgh synagogue.

H

ave you heard? The mid-
term elections are next week.
Really. Turn on your television
and wait a quarter
of a second and you
might catch one of the
thoroughly enjoyable
political ads, which is
a nice respite from the
3 gazillion pharmaceu-
Alan Muskovitz
tical commercials I’m
Contributing Writer
accustomed to seeing.
If pharmaceutical ads include up to a
minute’s worth of disclaimers, shouldn’t
political ads? Their messages are poten-
tially just as harmful as the drugs we
take and, no matter who your candidate
of choice is, there can be long-term side
effects. Perhaps a disclaimer like: “Seek
immediate help if you experience an
election lasting more than four hours.”
However, upon further inspection
of the political commercials I’ve seen
and heard, and the daily deluge of
direct mail campaign literature in my
mailbox, I have some incredibly great
news! (By the way, next to seeing peo-
ples’ dogs on Facebook, nothing brings
me more joy than seeing a candidate’s
canine on a direct mailer. I always vote
for the candidate that has a Golden

Our Story

Retriever.)
Where was I? Ah, yes, the good
news. It turns out that every ... single ...
candidate, no matter what side of the
aisle, has foolproof solutions to lower
our taxes, fix our roads, improve our
schools and update decaying infrastruc-
ture — while at the same time they
reduce spending, create jobs and lower
our cholesterol.
See, everything is going to be fine.
On to more pressing issues in my life.
I’m not a big online shopper, but I
needed a couple of new ink cartridg-
es for my printer, which, next to my
mortgage and car payment, is right up
there as one of my largest out-of-pocket
expenses.
I will never get used to the price
of ink. Every time I make a purchase
I visualize an oil derrick that just hit
a gusher, but ink comes spewing out
instead. As I’m sure know, you can lit-
erally buy a printer for about the same
money you spend on a couple new car-
tridges. By any chance, is there a candi-
date promising to lower ink prices?
Anyway, I decided to expedite my
purchase of ink by buying them online
(with free next-day delivery) from my
store’s website, saving what would nor-
mally be at least a 40-minute roundtrip
to the store. I mean how long could it
take online?
It took an hour and 10 minutes
online.

I have no ill will toward my ink
supplier; the lengthy purchasing pro-
cess was more a result of my technical
ineptness in navigating its website. But,
for their sake, I’ll use a pseudonym to
disguise the retailer’s name. I will sim-
ply refer to it as “Staplers.”
I went to its website and, over the
course of 70 minutes, I communicated
with three different representatives
(Christine, Reggie and Tracy) through
a chat room called “Staplers” Live
Customer Support. You know the drill
— you type a question and you get a
typed response back.
It took three representatives because,
somehow, I found a way to inadvertent-
ly end each chat session before I was
finished with my (expletive) purchase.
For the record, I should tell you that
a good portion of the 70 minutes was
taken up by correcting my (expletive)
typos in my original questions.
And this is the absolute truth ... my
online buying experience was so mem-
orable that I actually printed out the
entire transcript of my 70-minute chat
room session. It was 11 pages long! But
I couldn’t read pages 10 and 11 because
I ran out of ink. (Expletive.) ■

Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/acting
talent, speaker, emcee and an occasional
guest host on the Mitch Albom Show on WJR
AM 760. Visit his website at laughwithbigal.
com and “Like” Al on Facebook.

Kevin Kellman and Marc Kellman
spent 20 years in a family business
that was doing fine, but wasn’t what
they really wanted to do. Kevin, who
has a love of cooking, and Marc, the
practical numbers guy, come from a
long line of hard-working entrepreneurs,
so when they looked into a new venture,
pulling together a plan and doing the
work to launch it wasn’t a problem.
“I’ve been talking about a food
truck for seven years,” Kevin said.
“Detroit has one of the top foodie
cultures in the U.S. now, and there’s
potential here for people who love to
cook and people who love to eat.
Those are also things we love, and
there was a business in that, just not
the typical one.”
“What’s great,” Marc said,” is that a
food truck is far less expensive than
opening a restaurant, and with less
overhead and staff. You also need a
vision, and ours became Brother
Truckers.”
Kevin and Marc knew of Hebrew
Free Loan from friends, and when
they were looking for seed money,
they used their business experience
to research and refine their business
plan and applied to HFL’s Marvin I.
Danto Small Business Loan Program.
Brother Truckers launched this past
spring, and is gaining a following for
the lunch crowd and catering parties
and events.
“This is our first year,” Kevin said,
“and we have the opportunity to
learn and grow because HFL was
very supportive, and their willingness
to work with us and help us to be
successful was just phenomenal.”

Click. Call. Give Now.

www.hfldetroit.org • 248.723.8184

letters

Orthodox Students Attend
Community Day Schools

Since its founding in 1958, Hillel Day
School has provided an outstand-
ing education to Jewish children in
Metropolitan Detroit — no matter how
they practice Judaism at home. The
school has always welcomed Jewish
students affiliated with Orthodox

synagogues while Hillel was a mem-
ber of the Conservative movement’s
Solomon Schechter network of Jewish
day schools and, since 2008, when
the board of trustees voted for Hillel
to become a community day school
driven by a mission, not denomina-
tion. Today, children across the Jewish
spectrum spend up to 13 years at Hillel,
from our ECC through eighth grade, in

a respectful environment that adheres
to halachah to maximize inclusion for
all students and staff.
Since its founding 19 years ago,
Frankel Jewish Academy has similarly
been a welcoming educational institu-
tion for students from all Jewish back-
grounds and denominations. FJA has
always been a school that inspires stu-
dents to dedicate themselves to Jewish

Community donations help HFL
give interest-free loans to local Jews
for a variety of personal, health,
educational and small business
needs.

6735 Telegraph Road, Suite 300 • Bloomfield Hills, MI 48301

Hebrew Free Loan Detroit

@HFLDetroit

continued on page 6

jn

November 1 • 2018

5

