April 4 • 2019 5
jn
T
he month of March is over, but
March Madness, the NCAA
basketball tournament, is not.
The championship
game is this Monday
night and while I’
m
writing this column
days in advance of that,
I’
m praying one of the
teams is sporting green.
If you’
re not a bas-
ketball fan, it turns out
there were plenty of
other March Madnesses to go around.
The much-anticipated Mueller
Report was delivered to the attorney
general on March 22. I’
m sure by the
time you’
re reading this, that subject
will be ancient history, a thing of the
past, water under the bridge. I’
m sure
by now all cable news networks have
moved on to discuss other pressing
news, not the least of which is the
commendable compromising our
politicians on both sides of the aisle in
Washington are making on the issues
of the day.
I wrote that last paragraph with my
tongue so far into my cheek that it’
s
going to require an ENT to surgically
retrieve it.
One of the things that we can all be
thankful for is that we can now go back
to focusing our attention on something
of more immediate importance …
the next presidential election, which
is, don’
t look now … only 20 months
away!
Running for president, whether
you’
re the challenger or
the incumbent, requires
quite a balancing act.
In most cases, you need the ability to
ignore the job you were currently elect-
ed to do while focusing on the next job
you want. And get paid for doing it!
Imagine Matt Patricia spending next
season as the Lions head coach travel-
ing the country actively trying to con-
vince another team owner to hire him?
On second thought, that’
s not a good
analogy because nobody hires a former
Lions head coach to coach their team.
The other madness that made head-
lines in March, was the incredible
multi-million-dollar college admis-
sions scam involving parents, coaches
and administrators. Actresses Lori
Loughlin and Felicity Huffman were
among the most notable charged with
trying to buy their kids way into school.
Ironically, one of the story problems on
the kids’
doctored SAT tests was “if a
parent illegally pays millions to get their
kid into college, how many millions of
dollars will it take to get the parent out
on bail?”
Meanwhile, now that spring has
sprung, one of my spring-cleaning tasks
is to organize the dozens upon dozens
of computer passwords I’
ve created
over the years. I have a binder that
houses a variety of passwords for my
email addresses, utility bill payments,
subscriptions, bank accounts, etc., each
given its own 8½” x 11” sheet, each
password made up of a combination
of letters, numbers and symbols that
even the Russians would have trouble
hacking.
Don’
t be fooled. It sounds like I’
m
organized, but my password world is a
mess. I have a terrible habit of remov-
ing my password sheets from their
binder, losing the sheet, leaving me no
choice but to create a new password. If
I had a dollar for every time I had to
click the “Forgot Your Password” but-
ton trying to access an account, I’
d have
enough money to bribe someone to get
my kid into a prestigious college.
How bad does it get? I just invested
in a new Mac laptop, which initially
required me to enter my Apple ID pass-
word to get my programs up and run-
ning. However, in the process, I entered
the wrong password consecutively so
many times that, for security reasons,
Apple locked me out of my own com-
puter. I had to call “
Apple Care” tech
support to get me out of password jail.
Meanwhile, the good news is here I
sit having successfully finished writing
my latest JN column. The bad news,
I’
m going to be delayed moving onto
my next task — responding to emails
— because I can’
t locate or remember
my Gmail password. March is over but
Muskovitz Madness marches on. ■
Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/acting
talent, speaker, and emcee. Visit his website at
laughwithbigal.com,“Like” Al on Facebook and
reach him at amuskovitz@renmedia.us.
S
ince opening its doors in March of
2009, Henry Ford West Bloomfield
Hospital has posted some impres-
sive numbers. Over a 10-year span, it:
• Delivered more than 18,400 babies
• Performed 96,976 surgeries
• Valet parked more than 300,000
vehicles
• Logged 663,273 hours of volunteer
time
• Produced 551,651 x-rays, 260,198
CT scans, 120,138 MRIs, 253,160 ultra-
sounds and 157,663 mammograms
So how does it measure up against
one of the ultimate benchmarks of vol-
ume … the number of pounds of white-
fish served by Hoa Kow restaurant?
Based on extrapolations of data pro-
vided by Hoa Kow in the early 1990s to
Danny Raskin of the Jewish News, the
combined West Bloomfield and Oak
Park locations in their heyday would
have served more than 800,000 pounds
of whitefish over a 10-year period.
While the volume of X-rays and vol-
unteer hours are impressive, they don’
t
quite measure up to the still-revered
Hoa Kow yardstick.
And unlike radiation, you could have
Hoa Kow whitefish in seven different
styles — broiled, Hong Kong, Szechuan,
sweet and sour, hong sui, slightly bread-
ed and sautéed with light breading! ■
By Arthur Horwitz, executive editor and publisher
of the Jewish News.
for openers
It’s a Mad, Mad,
Mad World
Alan Muskovitz
Contributing Writer
views
Impressive Numbers, But Not Hoa Kow!