Life in the Interstate Propeller Set: The Mild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuttle: Wings Over Buffalo By Charles Ribakoff Note from Charles: Many of my friends (and some not for the first time) thought it was a little over the top, if not flat frigging nuts, when I went to Buffalo for the night for the last show on the Springsteen tour. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. This is, more or less, the truth. While a bad idea is an orphan, a good idea always has many proud parents. But this good idea could only come from my friend, Crazy Harry. Crazy Harry is the most rabid Springsteen fan I know, and my money’s on him for All World. This rock fan stuff can take you towards the obsessive, and on through to the other side. Nick Hornby just wrote a terrifically funny novel, Juliet Naked, about Duncan, a depressed middle aged man living in the north of England who has devoted himself to the brief and obscure career of Tucker Crowe. Tucker, whose publicity was such as posters proclaiming “Cohen x Dylan x Simon= Crowe”), made a few cult records ...

The Man With The Golden Voice. Another Music Story With a Moral by Charles K. Ribakoff No, this is not another Springsteen column. Writing about how great The Boss is, much as I love him, is kinda like shooting poodles in a barrel. (OK, just wanted to see if you were paying attention). Not all that obvious, but there’s not all you can say that’s new. And it’s been…done. Enough. For today’s music fable, boys and girls, we’re going to have to return to the great folk music scare of the ‘60s, when all that fiddle and banjo crap nearly caught on. It was powered by the beginning of the singer / songwriter phenomina, the hip to be miserable scene. The old, “I’ve suffered for my music, and now it’s your turn,” routine. In that group, which likely was propelled by some guy named Dylan (who, in truth, had his moments), there was a singularly depressed and depressing Canadian (no redundancy intended) named Leonard Cohen. You’ve likely never heard of him, and there’s not a lot of reason why you should. He had the voice of a man who gargled regularly with razor blades, and he had mastered, I think, 3 whole ...

I Am Somewhere In Israel. This is what you’re always told to say when you’re at a Secret Military Base, a quaint custom that predates this time when you can probably find out what they are serving for dinner at the base using Google Maps and an iPhone. This Secret Location is Secreter than most, located as it is next to the Really Secret Nuclear Reactor, which officially does not exist, despite the road signs in the city of Dimona that point, in Hebrew and English, to the Nuclear Research Facility. Go figure. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Whether you’re a Guns or Butter guy, if the military here wasn’t what it is, there is little practical argument that we would be here at all. If you read that sentence enough times, slowly, I think it may make sense The military is a huge part of the fabric of society. It brings almost every 18 year old from all parts of the society together, shakes and stirs them really hard, and turns them out no sooner than 3 years later, a little more blended together. Then everyone goes back for reserve ...

Gleaning. A Morality Tale Involving Tomatoes. By Charles Ribakoff “You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by And so become your dreams, because the past is just a good-bye Teach your children well…” --Graham Nash I will never look at a salad the same way again, but I am getting ahead of myself. I am in Israel, traveling this time with Patty and our girls, and good friends, and friends of friends to celebrate a bat mitzvah here in Jerusalem. It is Nicki’s (age 7) and Corky’s (age 10) first time in Israel. While all my trips here over the last 40 years have been special, this one is even more so, as I get to see it through their eyes. There are about 40 of us, half kids, half at least chronologically grown ups. It is not true that we are all bozos on this bus, but we are bus-bound all over. So one of the things that’s different about this trip for me is we are doing lots of touring, visiting lots of sites I have been too blasé or lazy to revisit. After all, one could think that a place with 5000 years of ...

No Retreat, Baby, No Surrender. By Charles Ribakoff Note from Charles: Once again, this is one that was written for the Harr / MHQ newsletter. Even a challenging business environment can be overcome by the healing power of rock and roll. I don’t know if he ever seriously considered this as a career choice, but Bruce Springsteen would have been one hell of a car guy. Probably even better than I’d be as a rock star. And herein maybe lies a story. I have had this eccentric fear (moi?) since I first saw Springsteen live in the early ‘70s and became a fan, that next time he came around, it wouldn’t matter to me so much. Maybe he’d have changed, or I would have, but I was worried that he wouldn’t hit me in the same way. But that hasn't happened in almost 40 years, during which time I have put the children of many scalpers through college. Now, I’ll stipulate that it might not have been what Bruce had in mind when I would hold my older daughter as a new born in the front of the airplane, and sing to her that tramps like us, baby we ...

How Now, Brown Chrysler? by Charles Ribakoff (Note from Charles: If this column stops suddenly, it’s probably because I have been struck by lightning. Remember me kindly). Hold the presses. Back in February, I posted an article called The Future of Chrysler. I thought it was only a matter of time before the bible was revised to rename the prophets Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Charles. What a great gig that could have been. Not quite the same poetry as, say, John, Paul, George and Ringo (or even as Dirk, Stig, Leppo, and Nasty, the pre-fab four), but, still, think of the sales potential: one in every hotel room, plus door to door summer sales. And the residuals…. But I digress. Turns out I may not have been prophetic enough to qualify for my own biblical edition, although I got it pretty close to right. Now that Chrysler has been Obamaed and inepted into Chapter 11, this is a good time to revisit the future of Chrysler. The intent here is to make the point this is a great time to buy one (this is, after all, a social media attempt by a purveyor of autos), and ...

Note from Charles: This is the column I write for members of the Harr / MHQ Team on a monthly basis. The column is invariably late, and, occasionally, makes no sense whatsoever, even to me. I used to think I would know I was truly wealthy when I could hire someone to play golf for me. I have lowered my goals. Now I just want someone to write this bleeping column for me. In any event, here goes…. Enough of this %&#@. Let’s Have Some Fun. In the first of these columns I wrote several years ago, I wrote about the importance of our having fun at what we do. I don’t know about you, but I’m not having as much fun at the office as I’d like to lately, and I bet neither are many of you. Probably the hardest part of my job these days is to walk around our places with a smile, and, if I am lacking anything inspirational to say, at least not saying anything that expediting someone’s jumping into a grease pit.. So I’ve been thinking about ways to put some fun things back into our business. ...

Boris Speaks: How Ribakoff Charles Ruined My Life By Boris Note from Charles: There is probably something in this story to offend practically everybody. This should not put you off buying a new Toyota, Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep from the Harr team. It was, after all, written by a hat. Charles write post about me, Boris, the Official Hat of Winter. Sometimes, Charles speak with forked tongue. Boris write this to set record straight. Is hard life being hat in Ukraine. Like job of Quixote Don is to reach unreachable star, is job of Ukrainian hat to heat unheatable head. Is just harder to set to music. Is even harder life being mink in Ukraine. Mink sleep outside on snow, eat food unfit for dog, grow up, and then farmer put you in dog food business. On supply side. What’s left becomes hat, or coat of grandmother. Not exactly growth industry for minks. There little concern about stability of social security trust fund for retirement of minks in Ukraine. On other hand, being unemployed mink hat in Ukraine not so bad. Everybody else unemployed, too, so little risk of being put to work as hat. ...

Note: I wrote this orginally for the Harr / MHQ team newsletter, hoping it would encourage our terrified employees to climb out from under their desks and maybe sell someone a new Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge or Toyota instead of being afraid that a bear (or maybe me) was going to get them. I don't know if the note succeeded in its original intent, but it was pretty catharctic to write. So here it is. Outrunning the Bear. So this is what it feels like in our business, the wonderful world of cars, in March, 2009: Every morning, you get up, get dressed, come to work, and feel like you are being chased by a bear. A big hungry mother of a bear. Even if you’ve never been caught by a bear, you know if he catches you, it won’t be pretty; it’ll be a bunch worse for you than it will be for the bear. So you run. Every night, you go home, decompress, sample an adult beverage or two, towel off and rest up. The next morning, you get up and do it all over again. This may not be the reason anyone choose to get into our ...

Boris. The Official Hat of Winter. Note: The article below contains the occasional disparaging comment about Ukraine. But the Ukraine I write about is a 1990s version of the modern Ukraine of today that I love (where there is no gas, the banks are closed so you can’t get a check cashed, and the doctors haven’t been paid in three months.). Any resemblance is coincidental So: No offense intended. Of Course. When a man starts to name his hats, it is possible that, as they say in Canada, there are Labatts in la belfry (note the obscure beer reference). Or maybe the snow in March has gone to the head. Which is, fortunately, covered by a hat. But Boris isn’t just any hat. Boris joined the family on my first trip to Dnepropretrovsk, Ukraine, many years ago. And therein lies a story. Dnepropretrovsk (pronounced…well, let’s just call it Dnep) is a city of about 1,000,000 people in central Ukraine. You may be surprised, that, having pulled out your pre-1992 Ukraine atlas (I keep mine in my Sunday pajamas) to find no mention of such a city, 1,000,000 brave souls or not. This ...