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!