I’M at the office.

Here at my favorite Starbucks.

I’ve been sitting here all day. I love the Strawberry Shopping Center Starbucks. I sometimes bring a YETI tumbler of my own coffee.

Nobody cares.

If you happen to be a freeloader, like yours truly, this is a little corner of paradise.

The Self Talker

The Self Talker just wandered in. Another old Boomer. Unlike the rest of us, he’s completely crazy. He circles the room railing about FACING CONSEQUENCES! alarming the timid while the rest of us pretend he’s invisible.

He’s done circling. He grabs a seat at the tall table facing the front entrance. Speaking emphatically of INVERTED SOULS AND PERSONAL REGIONS WHERE GOARDS AND HARVESTS OF PLENTY RESIDE but not screaming it…merely stating his point. Sometimes he talks in a holy roller gibberish. Sometimes he sounds almost normal…

He could be Shakespeare or Cato or Themistocles or George Bernard Shaw.

Could he be Ho Chi Minh?

That would be a stretch.

Or maybe not!

He could be ANYBODY. He talks and talks and talks. The Baristas ignore him. Those of us who are regulars ignore him. The little dog with a plastic bone ignores him. Nobody seems to care much about him. And that’s good because otherwise he could be arrested and beaten by enraged law enforcement officers…and murdered. He’s not Black. He’s a old crazy White Boomer. That’s beside the point. Crazy people are vulnerable regardless of their ethnicity.

Our Prisons are filled with crazy people.

I kind of admire The Self Talker’s personal hygiene. He always looks neat. Shambolically neat. He does not smell. I suspect he showers ever single day.

Bog People

Oh, no!

The Irish Boomer just walked in.

He grabs the empty table to my right.

The Irish Boomer exhibits bad personal hygiene.

I don’t need this guy sitting so close to me. I would prefer the Self Talker to this guy.

Christ! I may need to move.

The Irish Boomer stares at his cell phone.

He smells. He always smells.

He smells so bad I may get up and cross the room.

The Irish Boomer is not crazy. I don’t think he is. Can you never ever ever bathe and be perfectly normal? I don’t know the answer to that and I don’t want to know.

The Self Talker is crazy. But he does not smell. Good personal hygiene when you’re crazy is a notable achievement.

The Irish Boomer reminds me of the Peat Bog Cadavers. The other day he was in here and I called to him across two empty tables:

“You know they found a Peat Bog Cadaver the other day.”

“What’s that you say?”

“A peat bog corpse. Perfectly preserved. The dude was three thousand years old.”

“Nawww.”

“I bet he smelled something awful…”

“Who?”

“The Peat Bog Cadaver! Think about it. You go three thousand years without a bath. You gotta smell something awful.”

“Ehhh…”

Time Passes

Not three thousand years. More like thirty minutes.

If you asked me to wish for something at this very moment? I’d wish to be three thousand years old and perfectly preserved like the peat bog cadaver. Sleeping comfortably forever. Perfectly preserved. My second wish, at this very moment, is to be several tables farther away from the Irish Boomer…

The Irish Boomer is playing Backgammon

The Irish Boomer is behind me at the big table. Sitting with a pack of his cronies. Playing Backgammon. Three of them sit there watching the other two play. The Irish Boomer’s odor does not appear to bother his cronies. Maybe they all smell. I doubt it. If they smelled like the Irish Boomer smells this Starbucks would be emptied out in a New York Minute.

Backgammon. Looks like a silly game. I remember in College the Frat Boys loved to play Backgammon. That, and Foosball, another silly game. These games were all the rage at the Frat Bar where I worked. This was 1976 and both games were in style. I thought they were silly games because I was lousy at Foosball and I never learned to play Backgammon. Foosball is actually a game that requires real skill. Backgammon is one of the oldest board game in existence. Dating back 5000 years.

But the modern game dates back to 1635, when it was emerging as a variant of the popular mediaeval Anglo-Scottish game of Irish; the latter was described as a better game.

Wikipedia

What do you know? The game of Irish. Maybe this is why the Smelly Irish Boomer is such an avid player of Backgammon.

What do I know? I know very little of Backgammon. I never think of Backgammon. You ask me about Backgammon, Roderick Covlin comes to mind. The guy who murdered his rich wife.

The Roderick Covlin Case

A Manhattan jury on Wednesday convicted a backgammon-ace turned cold-blooded killer for snapping his estranged wife’s neck to score her $5.2 million fortune — as her family burst into tears.

It took the panel roughly two days to find Rod Covlin, 45, guilty of one count of second-degree murder for the shocking murder of banker Shele Danishfesky in her luxury Upper West Side apartment on New Year’s Eve 2009.

As the forewoman read the verdict, Danishefsky’s relieved siblings wept and embraced each other in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Covlin appeared stunned and dropped his head and closed his eyes.

“Finally, after nine years, we have justice for our beloved Shele,” said her brother-in-law, Marc Karstaedt, who has frequently spoken on behalf of the family. “She was a beautiful person, both inside and out, extraordinary in so many different ways and angelic, and she was brutally murdered in a way that no one could imagine.”

During the seven-week trial, Assistant DA Mathew Bogdanos argued that Covlin, who was living across the hall, snuck into Danishfesky’s apartment, used a martial arts chokehold to kill her then staged the scene to look like an accident.

Danishefsky, 47, a wealth manager at UBS, was about to excise the failed stockbroker and manic philanderer out of her will.

The couple was in the midst of a bitter divorce and custody battle over their two children, Anna and Myles.

Bogdanos acknowledged to jurors that the case was circumstantial but still overwhelmingly stacked in favor of a guilty verdict.

“There’s only one person in the universe, to the exclusion of every other person on the planet, only one person who had the motive, the opportunity and the means,” the prosecutor said in summations.

Covlin claimed that his daughter called him after finding Danishefsky’s lifeless body in the tub, and he rushed over to help. He told police he had pulled her body from the blood-tinged water, performed CPR then called 911. Yet his shirt was bone dry, cops noted.

Despite the suspect circumstances, police initially thought Danishefsky’s death was an accident.

Her face was covered in scratches, she had bruises on her right arm and she had a protective order against Covlin, who had repeatedly threatened to end her life.

Further hampering the investigation, her Orthodox Jewish family waived an autopsy.

But as suspicions multiplied, Danishefsky’s body was eventually exhumed and the city’s medical examiner determined that she had a fractured hyoid bone and ruled her death a homicide.

After the botched police investigation, it took nearly six years for prosecutors to gather enough evidence to charge Covlin.

A significant portion of the prosecution’s case involved Covlin’s depraved behavior before Danishefsky’s slaying and years after — including four murder plots against his own parents.

Defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb told jurors “you may despise him, you may detest him, you may be offended by his character” – but that doesn’t make him guilty.

In his summation, he harped on the lack of evidence, the bungled police investigation and the compromised crime scene.

Family members, a private investigator and a rabbi had repeatedly traipsed through the apartment unsupervised.

After the verdict, Covlin’s visibly stricken mother declined to comment as she left the courthouse.

Gottlieb blamed the unfavorable outcome on all the testimony jurors were permitted to hear about Covlin’s disturbing conduct before and after Danishefsky’s murder.

“We all knew how overwhelming the extraneous evidence was and the devastating impact it had on the jury,” he said.

Covlin’s defense plans to appeal.

The New York Post

Then there is this:

Wife-killing backgammon ace Rod Covlin was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars Wednesday for snapping his estranged spouse’s neck to score her $5.2 million fortune in 2009.

Audible gasps echoed through the courtroom as Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Ruth Pickholz handed down the maximum sentence, while Covlin dropped his head and closed his eyes.

Pickholz’s decision came right after his 12-year-old son, Myles, implored the judge to go easy on his dad, saying he still believes Covlin is innocent of his mother’s death.

“Please give him a light sentence so I have him back in my life … I love him so much,” the boy told the judge.

But Pickholz said she based her decision on the “overwhelming evidence” against Covlin.

A jury last month convicted the 45-year-old pro backgammon player of second-degree murder for snapping the neck of his estranged wife, Shele Danishfesky, in the bathtub of her luxury Upper West Side apartment on New Year’s Eve 2009.

Prosecutors argued that Covlin — a failed stockbroker who was living across the hall after the couple separated over his philandering ways — snuck into Danishfesky’s apartment, choked her to death, and then tried to make it look like an accidental drowning.

Danishefsky, 47, a wealth manager at UBS, was about to take Covlin out of her will and the pair were engaged in a bitter divorce and custody battle over Myles and their daughter, Anna.

Covlin claimed that his daughter found Danishefsky’s lifeless body in the tub, and he rushed over to help, performing CPR and then calling 911.

His mom on Wednesday read the judge a letter from Anna, also pleading for a light sentence.

During the trial, prosecutors said Colvin hatched numerous plots to kill his own parents, kidnap a then-13-year-old Anna and marry her off to access his wife’s inheritance — and once coached a 2-year-old Myles to claim that his mom had molested him.

Covlin nevertheless tried to invoke his kids again while insisting on his innocence to the judge and vowing to appeal.

“Fortunately my daughter, who slept in Shele’s bed that night, knows the truth. She is the one person who could. Our children are amazing people, they are strong, and courageous and wise and they know that I love them,” he told Pickholz.

Danishefsky’s younger brother accused Covlin of using “two innocent little children” and labelled him a “menace to society.”

“He’s a killer, he’s a terrorist … he must rot there never to see the light of day,” Philip Danishefsky told the judge.

Older brother Fred Danishefsky called Colvin “an evil predator.”

“The existence of Rod Covlin is the strongest argument there is for the death penalty. Unfortunately, the death penalty is not available,” he said.

After the judge’s sentence came down, her sister Eve Karstaedt told The Post: “She got it right, she got it right.”

What a wimp.

I don’t know how much you can make as a Ace Backgammon player.

Was Rod Covlin world-class?

I know Omar Sharif was a big time Backgammon player. I don’t know if Omar was world-class. Do I feel like looking up all this shit? Not really….let me just speculate. Rod Covlin never made a fortune playing Backgammon. That’s why he murdered his wife. He wanted her money. She had five million and he wanted it. As for Omar Sharif?

Okay, I just looked him up. Omar Sharif was a world-class backgammon player. Also a world-class Bridge player. He was no slouch, Omar Sharif…

The smelly Irish Boomer is not Irish

Man, I had to move. The Irish boomer smells so bad I was forced to move. Maybe the cronies smell too. I don’t know. All I know, the smelly Irish Boomer is not Irish. How do I know this? The Self Talker just informed me.

He sat down next to me. I was gonna move again but I thought what the fuck. At least he doesn’t smell. I even said so. I said, “You know what. At least you don’t smell. That guy over there smells.”

“What guy?”

“The Irish dude.”

“He’s not Irish.”

“He sounds Irish.”

“He’s Scottish.”

“Really?”

“He’s from Aberdeen.”

“Okay. So he’s a Scottish dude. He still smells.”

“That, my friend, is the odor of the arid Gobi.”

“The Gobi Desert?”

“Yes. Where the Bedouins roam.”

“The Gobi is in Northern China. You’re thinking of the Sahara.”

“It is the Gobi. The Gobi! Lawrence of the Gobi.”

“What a minute.”

“Lawrence of the Gobi!”

Wasn’t Omar Sharif in that movie?