Tag Archives: stan lerner

Poetry

IRON GATE ALL HALLOWS EVE

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As I sat and pondered All Hallows Eve, a dark cloud descended on my soul, mournful sorrow its only goal. And then the ghost of my porch stood silently and stared, urging me to ponder further if I dared. So I searched the deepest reaches of my mind, waiting for this skeleton jackal to opine. Finally this pirate long dead spoke, “The remedy to your doom and gloom is a party on this particular date, that would be a party at Iron Gate.”

“Yes, a Halloween Party!” I shouted out to nobody at all. Then dreamed of the days past at The Monsters Ball.

Few days to the fright of night, few days til Poe’s delight. Do you hear Iron Gate calling, do you feel yourself falling, falling into your doomed fate, Halloween night at Iron Gate?

To men of analytical persuasion does Halloween make sense? To men of genius tis a night of recompense. Why? Because genius is found in the imagination, dark a place as it may be, you’ll need to come to Iron Gate to speak more of this with me!

True it is of sightings of apparitions at the house with gates of iron, “And thou art dead as young and fair,” haunts the words of Great Lord Byron. Will the spirit of this noble poet join our Mr. Poe? Attendance at All Hallows Eve at Iron Gate, is the only way to know. To know about love lost, at such a cost, that souls are left to wander, sad, sad it is a Halloween to squander.

The rooms have been occupied and we have served food and libations galore, but all who can count, know it well that it’s only hours til the night that we adore. Now there are those who want something for nothing, America’s truly great foe, so if kids want candy at Iron Gate, they’re going to listen to Mr. Poe!!! ha, ha, ha, ha!!! Continue reading IRON GATE ALL HALLOWS EVE →

Arts & Culture

RICHARDSON AUDITORIUM BETTER THAN EVER

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I’m pleased to say that the Richardson Auditorium / Richardson Performing Arts Center, Southwestern College and the town of Winfield, Kansas have decided to NOT participate in the decline of America. Saturday night, the great auditorium, which resides in the great building on the hill, overlooking the entire Walnut Valley, reopened. Having undergone an almost three million dollar renovation Richardson has been transformed into a performance art venue, which to my ear, seems to have the best acoustics to be found, not just in the state of Kansas, but very possibly the entire Midwestern region.

To rededicate the stage Southwestern College President Dick Merriman presided over the always-enjoyable ribbon cutting ceremony. I love these nostalgic traditions. And the campus minister offered a nice prayer to the Lord. As the four hundred plus people in attendance offered a prayer for the occasion, I wondered how many knew that sundown concluded the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, the day when the fate of all is sealed. I decided not to inquire, because an intentional selection of this day would be very impressive, but the unintentional selection of this day is even more so—

The performance, called Kaleidoscope, consisted of a mix of music performed by the South Kansas Symphony, A Cappella Choir, SC Singers and a truly beautiful violin solo by Leora K. (Martin) Kline. Conductors Daniel Stevens and David Gardner could not have performed their respective duties with any greater class or musical fluidity—yes, the music simply flowed. On several occasions during the performance my mind wandered back to Los Angeles, I was sitting in the Disney Concert Hall and Gustavo Dudamel was conducting Shakespeare & Tchaikovsky, such a beautiful flow it all was, from one great musical experience to another. Continue reading RICHARDSON AUDITORIUM BETTER THAN EVER →

Poetry

LIFE THE POEM

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Life began simple enough, a family, friends and just enough stuff. We’d spend summers at the beach, swim in the ocean, and building a sandcastle was a powerful notion.  I usually walked on the beach as the sunset in the sky, the wind of change bringing a tear to my eye.

At night I would pray for my friends, family and myself to be blessed in the Lord’s light, not much of a task for the creator’s might. Good health, long life, peace and prosperity for all of which I did pray, a small boy with much to the Lord to say. And my prayers the Lord did hear, I’m forever grateful my soul he brought near.

In the double digits girls and things I did become aware, both the cause of so much despair. It seemed that girls were attracted more to the surface than to the deep, I could not imagine then the depths I would creep. I sat on a roof and said aloud, I’ll give people what they want, a decision my whole life doth it haunt.

One day I drove home in my new fancy car and smiled as heads turned from afar. That’s right look at me I thought, and admire what I have, and what you have not. And the girls did beg for a ride, truly both good and evil rise with the tide.

As these early years passed on by, I’d lie in the grass and gaze up at the sky. I dreamed of being a man of great wealth, but not for my own account, no it was for the cause of good for which I would mount. I also dreamed of being a wordsmith, because the pen has more might than the sword and to this day of this dream I have never been bored.

I stood in the vast living room of my suite at The Plaza and declared to a girl that I was bigger than life; from heaven above these words bring great strife. I was an outlaw then, I had lost my way, hard to imagine being that man today. Now in America the law encompasses every moment and every action, an ugly scar on the face of freedom’s attraction.

A few more years passed on by and I once again looked up at the sky. I asked the Lord my maker for another chance, on the path of the righteous for my feet to advance. And make no mistake brothers, sisters, and friends; there are great trials and tribulations to making amends.

I’ve done much business now over the years, some to applause and some to jeers. My advice: in business be rich or poor, for mediocrity is no place to endure. Walk on the left or walk on the right, because it is the middle of the road which is the place of great plight. Continue reading LIFE THE POEM →

Thought Tools

THE GIRL DOWN BY THE MILL

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A short story by Award Winning author Stan Lerner:

 I was a person of means and considerable talent, when I left the city of my birth. To some this may sound like the words of a man lacking for humility, but suffice it to say that my many character flaws are more humbling to my soul than the wearing of rags and walking with my head bowed low. And although there are many nuances to humility it can generally be said that humility at its very core is simply the understanding that all comes from God. A man of means could have worked every hour of every day and accumulated nothing if for it not being God’s will, that he wax rich. And conversely it is true that a man may have done little to upset his restive state and yet still have been blessed by great wealth. Of course I could go on with numerous examples, but a short story is often more appreciated. I declare now that everything that I have is from God and everything that I do not have I am not deserving of because I am a sinner…And there is this one thing that I have, that for the life of me I cannot know what I have done to deserve, that would be the girl that I met down by the mill.

Some journeys take the adventurous at heart to the ends of the earth. And other journeys take the adventures of the heart much past the point of death. You see it is safer to climb the highest mountain than to know one’s own heart, in fact it was coming to know my own heart that drove me to the brink of an angry existence, which is tantamount to death. The poor are dead for they have no choices, but the angry have chosen death because anger is simply the purest form of idolatry. How often I can recount seeing the faces of idolatrous worshipers on fire with some misplaced passion. All of this being recounted, I should explain more completely that I was to walk both paths before leaving the place of my birth to find a place to call home.

As a young man my pursuit of wealth knew no bounds, so voracious was my appetite for money, even to this very day, I am not able to conceive of an amount that would have satisfied my lust. Upon concluding that material wealth alone would not satiate the beast within, I turned to fame, but not the despicable fame of those who are famous for being famous, which is an existence lower than that of the shellfish, which exist on the consumption of the fesses of other fish. No, only the fame derived from great accomplishment would do. Physical accomplishment of the aforementioned adventurer was of little interest; I had climbed high peaks and won many a worthless trophy and medal. What peak hadn’t already been climbed—a question this is not. And while no man could ever obtain the knowledge of all things, as King Solomon had, Albert Einstein had made it relatively clear that the final frontier, that which is the genius of imagination, is infinite. Never ending genius, therefore the never-ending titillation of a greedy man such as I. So to this endeavor I put myself—the honor achieved by presenting that, which is imagined into the written word.

And yes, like wealth before it, I did also gain honorable fame, an oxymoron if ever there was…I will say this, that like death I wish no man discomfort, but for those who despised me for my wealth, my fame as a wordsmith was all too much. And I did chuckle at the expense of these fools, so disquieted by another’s success they were, when all know that my success was only possible by the miserable failure of succumbing to vanity. I did indeed almost fail my way to the top, yet the Lord found mercy on my soul and spared me this final tragedy. “Can a man such as I really start over somewhere?” I asked, as I drove down the road with no particular destination in mind. “Or will I just roam the wilderness of life?” Continue reading THE GIRL DOWN BY THE MILL →

Dining

EASTSIDE CHIPPERY THE FINAL CHAPTER

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As I sit in one of my favorite coffee houses, somewhere in a small town in Kansas, my mind drifts to the last year in which I performed my services as Chef Stan, The Iron Chef, of Montebello’s Eastside Chippery. Of all the roles I have played, master criminal, art dealer, visual artist, night club owner, clothing designer, movie producer and all the variations there of, I can honestly say that Chef Stan and the Eastside Chippery may have been the most challenging. And perhaps the most rewarding.

Usually at this point I would recap some of my thoughts from the blogs Eastside Chippery Part I and Part II, but frankly I’m not much in the mood to look back—I’ll save that for the book. Suffice it to say that a little over a year ago I wound up taking over a really bad Mexican food restaurant in my hometown of Montebello. And this restaurant, against all odds, turned out to be both an incredible fiasco and success simultaneously during the same year. This being said, I’d like to share some of the deeper thoughts and emotions that I experienced during the course of being Chef Stan of the Eastside Chippery.

In many ways I am the ultimate of ordinary and yet there is a very unusual spark here and there that has for all of my life made me different. I say this now because it’s always had an effect and or influence on how things I’ve been involved in have turned out. It’s also the reason that people throughout my life have had such strong reactions toward me. In short, I’ve been blessed to have been the recipient of kindness and teaching by people of much greater accomplishment than myself and I have also been hated by people who have perceived insult or mistreatment, which in fact may have occurred, but certainly to no degree that merited, in some cases, unadulterated malice.

For 45 years or so, there was a part of me that just wanted to be normal. However, in my heart there was an even greater desire to be special. And over the last year at the Eastside Chippery I came to realize that both were vanity and the source of much of what had become frustrating and emotionally painful to me. One might ask, hadn’t you heard the words of King Solomon? And the answer is, yes, I had heard the words “Vanity of vanities…” but hearing and understanding do not necessarily equate to harkening. As I stood in the kitchen cooking and washing dishes sometimes for 32 hour stretches at a time, my heart, for lack of better words, began to soften and the vanity to dissipate. Continue reading EASTSIDE CHIPPERY THE FINAL CHAPTER →

Politics

THE STATE OF THE UNION

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Friends,

After writing eight books, ten movies, two Vegas shows, a dinner show, a television series, four hundred blogs and one famous poem over a ten-year period, I concluded it might be time to pause—drive around the country, do some cooking (I’ve been cooking and doing dishes at a restaurant in Montebello known as the Eastside Chippery) and frankly, do some thinking and try to rediscover myself.

And while much cogitation has been about my own life, my mind has at times wandered to the contemplation of the world around me, not as a blogger / pundit, but as a hard working American. Not so surprisingly, over the course of the last two years a variety of people have asked me to share my thoughts on what’s going on or as many might think, what’s going wrong in our country, yet I have refrained. Why? Given that I am not known for being shy with respect to speaking what I believe to be the truth, irregardless of who it might offend, even the rich and powerful, actually, especially the rich and powerful. Well, simply put, I decided that it was best to give our leaders a chance to right the ship. And yes, I knew that they would fail. And yes, I let them do so, while I cooked and did dishes. And I’ve thought about and continue to think about this decision a great deal. There is not a problem that our country faces that there is not a solution to, but a solution is in the realm of the abstract unless implemented…And do Americans really want solutions? I haven’t decided, none-the-less, I have concluded that I would at least share a few observations.

The National Debt is close to 15 trillion dollars. If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling the Federal Government will default on many of its obligations. Note: Our government borrows 40% of every dollar it spends. Continue reading THE STATE OF THE UNION →

Dining

EASTSIDE CHIPPERY STORY PART 1

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So it’s been a few months since I’ve written a blog, interesting given that I’m a writer or more accurately, a storyteller. And when I think of what I do as storytelling I tell myself that I’ve been hard at work, because there are many ways to tell a story…

Background: After driving around the country for a few months, with my longtime friend Mike Munoz, I felt the need to do more than write about the human condition—I felt the need to be involved, as times have become such a sad state of affairs. There is great temptation at this very moment to delve into the woes of the world and our culture in particular, but I think at this juncture the readers of this humble (LOL) blogger would be better served by my restaurant tale “EASTSIDE CHIPPERY”.

As I traveled around this vast and beautiful country of ours I reached a point in my thoughts that I would take the first opportunity that presented itself to me as something to do in the most physical sense of being. However, the idea of a restaurant, anywhere, loomed large—given I’ve owned a few in the past in which I proved to have some prowess in the culinary arts. And philosophically I enjoy the idea of making something for people that they not only need, but also can elevate both body and soul—and even beyond that community can be built around.

How and why I found myself stranded in Washington DC is for another story, but suffice it to say that my road trip ended abruptly and I was on a plane headed for Los Angeles— my home in Downtown still occupied by tenants, my childhood home in Montebello calling to me to come take a rest. Well not a rest, the time had come to face many things, (mostly my own failings) and in the process of doing so I came to lease what was once a fast food restaurant (Taco Bell) on Beverly Blvd. in Montebello.

The concept was always to make some great fish n’ chips, burgers and high end coffee drinks, however as business plans tend to do this one evolved…Think European Café meets East LA. Along the way there was the obligatory partner who split with no notice and a variety of wacky events that included a blackout that lasted a day…Anyway, getting back into the world of real business has provided insight into the current state of American culture that no amount of intellectual examination could have.

Although there is too much to say with respect to all matters, which ensued subsequent to my takeover of the failed restaurant “Chela’s” and the process of transition to Eastside Chippery, I’d like to touch on a few almost absolutes:

The audacity of hope is meaningless when there is not a means to an end and or the lack of ability to achieve an end. Chela’s failed because it offered mediocre to bad food, gave small portions, and for good measure kept the shortest hours possible. I believed that great food, served in large portions, made available over the course of several more hours than not only Chela’s, but all of the neighboring restaurants established a solid means to an end.

There can be no success in a culture that does not value extremely hard work. And the hard work herein contemplated is both the hard work of developing a skill set and the implementation of the skills once acquired. So behind the Eastside Chippery brand I created a company called Mom’s Kitchen Café LLC, which translates in our kitchen to food made with love—from scratch, fresh, cooking for the pure enjoyment of feeding customers thought of as members of an extended family—NO SHORTCUTS!!! And anyone who really knows me, knows that when I say that, “I want things done right” I mean this to a degree very few people have ever contemplated!

Product, product, product, is the key to success. Continue reading EASTSIDE CHIPPERY STORY PART 1 →

Arts & Culture

GET THE RIGHT GUY

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Foreword by Stan Lerner: WARNING FOR WOMEN READERS  if you want to spend your life alone or enjoy unfulfilling going nowhere relationships this blog is not for you. If on the other hand you want a real man, that knows how to treat a woman to share your life with, read away!!!

Get The Right Guy

Introduction

Ladies, since so many of you have wanted to read my book for men, “Get Chicks 101,” I have decided to write you your own book. Now, I realize that you have good intentions when you go snooping around “Get Chicks 101.” But it is indicative of a far greater problem, which we will attempt to solve in this new book.  In my book for guys, I was trying to turn them back into men. In my book for women, I am going to enlist your help in this effort. However, at the same time, I do want to have a serious discussion about the type of woman the right guy is looking for.

What qualifies me to advise you? Well growing up with a mom and two sisters, for starters. Perhaps even more valuable is this painful fact of my life: I have dated so many of you, I have frankly become an expert through life experience. Also, I am your average forty-something bachelor and I am qualified for that reason alone to tell you what men are really thinking about you.

Just to define average, let me tell you more about myself so that you truly know where I’m coming from. I am forty-two, I have never been married, and I have had no children out of wedlock. Most of the time I make a good living and I am my own boss. I own a home and drive a convertible SL500 Mercedes Benz. I do want to get married and I treat women well. I don’t smoke or do drugs and I only drink socially.

Not enough? I love kids and I am good with them. I write and paint as hobbies and I am handy around the house. I workout six days a week and I enjoy dressing well. I come from a good family. My parents were happily married for thirty-eight years and we talked almost every day while they were still alive. I love to have fun—movies, pool, dancing—all are big with me. And I am fine to stay home with some candles and a good dinner, which I am more than capable of cooking. So, if you are looking for a guy that fits this general description, I am qualified to tell you how to get one.

If on the other hand, you are looking for a guy who will treat you badly, be afraid of commitment, not make a good living, and cheat on you, then this book is not for you. You certainly don’t need my expert advice on how to land this guy—he’s everywhere!  Women write most of the books that will tell you how to land the wrong guy ironically enough. I cringe every time I see one of these authors being interviewed. They make their money by steering you towards your next relationship disaster, only so they can write a sequel to their first book—which is usually on coping with the unhappiness of being alone. Ladies, when you see these authors being interviewed, do they strike you as role models? I have yet to hear one say she knows what she is talking about because she took her own advice and landed a great guy.

No offence to Dr. Laura, Dr. Ruth, Oprah or Rosie, but trust me here. When it comes to guy advice, what are you thinking by listening to them? Dr. Phil? Would you date him? I didn’t think so. My point is simple. Women are the victims of bad advice—volumes and volumes of bad advice—political correctness gone crazy mixed with feminism. So, I have decided to step up and speak-out.

Why have men been keeping silent so long as women constantly drift down the wrong road? It’s complicated. But the short answer is simply that there are secrets that are supposed to be kept just among the boys. To get us, you need to understand us—and that information till now has been verboten to women. In the old days, your mother would have told you how to get a man. But most of you stopped listening to Mom a long time ago. And these days, sadly enough, Mom has her own problems. So, what you should have learned about men growing up, from other women, can now really only be told to you by a man.

Listen to me closely because there are a lot of great guys out there and one has your name on him. I am going to tell you many tightly held guy secrets. Don’t misuse them. My goal is to get you back on track to getting the right man. And I’m warning you now; some of what I say may come as a shock. But in the end, if you take my advice, you will have an exponentially greater chance at not only getting the right guy; you will have a great chance of keeping him. Continue reading GET THE RIGHT GUY →

Nightlife

MONTEBELLO PARTY

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There’s a sleepy, perfect little town just eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles and it’s called Montebello. My very being was crafted from it’s rich, fertile soil, water, and air—for this bad boy the party started at Beverly Hospital, where a nurse gave me my first gulps of libation, from a bottle, not a breast unfortunately, but I was a happy boy all of the same. I met Richard Zinman at Camp Montiqeua, while playing on the fire engine at Montebello Park—Ilene Rossoff introduced us and we’ve been hanging out ever since, forty-one years and counting. After Richard the friends piled up into a unique sculpture of souls–Walter, Christian, Randy Kubota, Damien, Richard Ramos, Albert, Zano, Pauline, Deane, Lisa, Peaches, Chris, Julie, Evette, Norik, Munoz, Lucy, the Garza’s Gary, Dennis and Kathy, Lori (my first) Robin, Susan Robinson (Oh Susan) Suzy Ross, Mike Smith, Andy Franco, Larry, Gabby, Andrea, David, Natasha, Ronnie, Mark, Lillian, Geri, Laura, Dennise, Dennis, Stacy, Eddie, Edward, Sergio, Leonard, Tony, Aram, (Mike Valdez, Mike Markarian and Craig Pike, may they rest in peace) and the list goes on and on and on—souls, perhaps not all as misbehaved as my own, but all with an appetite for fun equal to or exceeding that of my own. In short, for some reason a hell of a lot of the coolest people on earth landed in one little place, just east of East LA—at the same time!

Oh my friends, so many years, so many good times. Can the party still go on?

There are two words that should bring a smile to any earthly inhabitant’s face “MONTEBELLO PARTY”…Or for those who suffer the misery of not having grown up in the place of my most fortunate birth, THERE’S NO PARTY LIKE A MONTEBELLO PARTY!!!

I looked in the mirror and thought, “I’m forty-five and I can’t believe I’m still this good looking…Thank you Lord…And I think I’ll start going to the gym again one of these days just to make things even more ridiculous.” I headed down the stairs; every step reminded me of the groin pull that had relegated my love life to inactive status for weeks. “Oh, I need a good party,” I thought to myself. “What if I never have sex again?” I shook my head to rid the horrible thought and grabbed a bottle of Jack and a bunch of other booze, which I tossed in a bag and headed for the door—Montebello folk don’t show up empty handed!

Rosemary’s house is all of three blocks from my own so no need to drive. And then like music to my ears the air was filled with those familiar voices. I didn’t bother to knock, and then the hand shaking, hugging, drinking, drinking, drinking, eating drinking, eating, eating, eating and real conversation with real people began. And no Hip Hop crap played, just the 80’s finest…I felt like doing some lines, but of course I didn’t because drugs are illegal. “I’ll suck your dick or give you a hand job—I’m serious.” I won’t say who made this offer…Lisa grabbed me by the arm, hey do you want to go to J & S and get some bean and cheese burritos. “I can’t drive,” I muttered back. “I can,” said Lisa. Continue reading MONTEBELLO PARTY →

What's happening

iPAD—FINALLY ALL OF MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON iPAD

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Let me get this out of the way, right up front…BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!! Finally, all of my books, Stan Lerner’s Criminal, In Development, Get Chicks 101, Get The Right Guy, Impact, Ninety Nine Post, and Blast are available in Apple’s iBookstore for iPad…There, fifteen years of work summed up in one sentence. But I wouldn’t be much of a storyteller if I didn’t have more to say than this…

It was about thirty-five years ago that I began sharing my vision with some of my close friends about not only wanting to be a writer, but wanting people to be able to read my works on handheld computers all over the world, in every language, and my words would be delivered through the air to these, at the time imaginary, devices. And because my friends were patient with me and had good imaginations of their own, I wasn’t dismissed as a SciFi crackpot. Rather, I was just thought of as crazy ambitious with an ego that seemingly knew no bounds. Not because I wanted to be rich or famous, but because I believed that what I wrote could make a difference on a global scale—especially if I could write and answer to no one other than I.

So as I watched my digital books take their place on the digital bookshelf of the iPad in my hand I couldn’t help, but to say, “Finally.” And I should mention here that this moment was made all the more important to me by the fact that Barnes & Noble and Borders had refused to put my award winning novel “Stan Lerner’s Criminal” in their stores—for no reason anyone who buys books can understand. The anger and frustration over my work being kept from the general public weighed on me heavily—my books becoming available on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Smashwords, did lighten the weight somewhat, but because iPad is much more than an ebook reader, meaning it will be used by the general public (EVERYONE), it’s the iPad, which has finally lifted the burden from my back completely.

Now while I’m the first to admit that there are technophiles far more qualified to revue the iPad than I, let me just assure you that if you try an iPad—you’ll buy an iPad! I have a MacBook Pro, I love it! I have an iPhone, I love it! I have a Kindle, I love it! And let me be perfectly clear—if you just want to read books on a light, relatively inexpensive device, Kindle totally rocks!!! And then there’s iPad, which combines elements of all of the previously mentioned, with some great new twists—all the more perfect because it allows you to experience these elements in ways / dimensions the others do not. Not that it replaces the others, it doesn’t, but it simply adds on to them. Being a couch potato these days just ain’t what it used to be!!! So yes, an iPad will be joining my growing list of things…

If I may depart from the iPad theme of this blog to focus on the central element of my childhood dream for a moment… Continue reading iPAD—FINALLY ALL OF MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON iPAD →